History of lute-family instruments

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=center

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| image2 = MusicalBow.gif

| width2 = 145

| alt2 = Musical bow

| caption2 = Musical bows have survived in some parts of Africa.

| image1 = COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Harp-luit TMnr A-11006.jpg

| width1 = 150

| alt1 = Harp lute, from West Africa

| caption1 = Bow harp or harp lute, West Africa

|image3=Illustration of Homme masque en Bison jourant de la flute Wellcome M0004767.jpg

|width=150px

|alt3=engraving of cave wall art

|caption3=Figure on wall whose bow(?) has been thought of as possibly musical.

}}

In theory, families of musical instruments descend from the musical bow.

Henri Breuil surveyed the Trois Frères caves in France and made an engraving that attempted to reproduce a c. 13,000 BC cave painting into a black-and-white lithograph engraving.{{cite web|url= http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/prehistoric/trois-freres-cave.htm| title=Trois Freres Cave|access-date=March 27, 2015|quote=Henri Breuil surveyed the cave ... a detailed study was published by H.Breuil and R.Begouen of the hundreds of engraved drawings in the deep gallery known as the 'Sanctuary'. ... Its walls are filled with some 280 engraved (often superimposed) images of bison, horses, stags, reindeer, ibexes, and mammoths.}} His engraving showed a mysterious figure, a "man camouflaged to resemble a bison", in the midst of a mass of herd-animals, "herding the beasts and playing the musical bow".{{cite web |url= http://algargosarte.blogspot.com/2014/10/el-arte-rupestre-paleolitico-en-las.html|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20180902031447/http://algargosarte.blogspot.com/2014/10/el-arte-rupestre-paleolitico-en-las.html|url-status= dead|archive-date= 2 September 2018|title= El Arte Rupestre Paleolítico En Las Cuevas Francesas. La Cueva De Lascaux. |last=Garcia |first= Alfredo|date=5 October 2014 |website=algargosarte.blogspot.com |quote=[Concerning a pair of images below the text; the top image is a line drawing showing a herd of animals drawn over one another with the hunter and bow in the pack; the other image is a photo of the cave wall with that image, enhanced to show the hunter and animals directly in front of him distinctly:] En Les Trois Frères destacaría su estilo tan naturalista. ... Es famosa la escena que del hombre camuflado como un bisonte, ¿Un chamán o un cazador?, que persigue o conduce a otros animales y que he destacado del conjunto superpuesto de abajo. [translation: In Les Trois Frères I would highlight his naturalistic style. ... The scene is famous, that of the man camouflaged to resemble a bison, (a shaman or a hunter?), that pursues or leads other animals, and that I have stood out from the set superimposed below.]}}{{cite book |last= Walter |first= Eugene Victor|date= 1988|title= Placeways: A Theory of the Human Environment |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=-cFXcXKI5tIC&q=%22musical+bow%22%2C+%22Trois+Fr%C3%A8res%22&pg=PA89|location= Chapel Hill, North Carolina|publisher=UNC Press Books |page=89 |isbn= 978-0-8078-1758-2 |quote=a semi-human figure dances in the midst of the animals ... herding the beasts and playing a musical bow. He wears the head and fur of a bison with human legs.}} The artwork is confused, and those who are trying to reproduce the art in color have had to work to bring out legible images. One interpretation of the "magician-hunter" image considers his hunting-bow to be a musical bow, used as a single-stringed musical instrument.{{cite web | last1= Campen | first1 = Ank van| title= The music-bow from prehistory till today | url= http://www.harphistory.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=65&Itemid=17&lang=en | website= HarpHistory.info| access-date= March 26, 2015|quote=A cave-painting in the "Trois Frères" cave in France dating from about 15,000 years ago. The magician-hunter plays the musical bow.}}

Whether the bow in the cave illustration is a musical instrument or the hunting tool in a Paleolithic hunt, musicologists have considered the idea that the bow could be a possible relative or ancestor to chordophones, the lutes lyres, harps and zither families.{{harvnb|Dumbrill|1998|pp=179, 231, 235–236, 308–310}} Curt Sachs said that there was good reason not to consider hunters' bows as likely musical bows.{{cite book |last=Sachs |first=Curt |date=1940 |title=The History of Musical Instruments |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach|url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |pages=[https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach/page/56 56–57] |isbn=978-0-393-02068-7}} One reason was that the oldest known musical bows were 10 feet long, useless for hunting, and that "musical bows were not associated with hunters' beliefs and ceremonies".

Sachs considered the musical bows important, however. He pointed out that the name for the Greek lute, pandûra was likely derived from pan-tur, a Sumerian word meaning "small bow".{{cite book |last=Sachs |first=Curt |date=1940 |title=The History of Musical Instruments |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach|url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |pages=[https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach/page/136 136–137] |isbn=978-0-393-02068-7}} He considered this evidence in support of the theory that the musical bow was ancestral to the pierced lute.

The bows used for music required a resonator, a hollowed object like a bowl, a gourd or a musician's mouth, in order to produce audible sound. Although the musical bow could be manipulated to produce more than one tone instruments were developed from it that used one note per string. Since each string played a single note, adding strings added new notes for instrument families such as bow harps, harps and lyres. In turn, this led to being able to play dyads and chords. Another innovation occurred when the bow harp was straightened out and a bridge used to lift the strings off the stick-neck, creating the lute.{{harvnb|Dumbrill|1998|pp=308–310}}

This picture of musical bow to harp bow is theory and has been contested. In 1965 Franz Jahnel wrote his criticism stating that the early ancestors of plucked instruments are not currently known.{{cite book |last=Jahnel |first=Franz |date=1965 |title=Manual of Guitar Technology: The History and Technology of Plucked String Instruments (Fachbuchreihe Das Musikinstrument, Bd. 37) |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4QTfTINjQtUC&q=balkan+mandolin&pg=PA15 |page=15 |publisher=Bold Strummer |isbn=978-0-933224-99-5|quote=There have been some uncertain presumptions concerning the "invention" of the bowed harp. ... The "musical bow" conjectured by many music scholars is not definitely recognizable in any cave paintings. The fact that some African negroes held the end of their bow shaped harp in their mouths in order to improve the tone ... should not be taken as proof that the first European bowmen were also conversant with the musical bow.}} He felt that the harp bow was a long cry from the sophistication of the 4th-millennium BC civilization that took the primitive technology and created "technically and artistically well-made harps, lyres, citharas and lutes".

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=center

|header = Earliest images of lute were mainly long-necked lutes

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| image1 = Elamite long-lutes.jpg

| width1 = 151

| alt1 = Elamite lute players 1400 BC

| caption1 = Elamite long-necked lute (left) and short-necked lute from the first half of the 2nd millennium BC found at Susa.|Fabien Dany]], [https://www.fabiendany.com www.fabiendany.com]

| image2 = Luth player-Sb 7899-IMG 0897-black.jpg

| width2 = 150

| alt2 = Elamite lute player, late 14th century and early 12th century BC

| caption2 = Elamite long-necked lute, late 14th century BC to early 12th century BC. There were no pegs to hold strings. Strings were wrapped with cords at the end of the neck. Each tassel indicates a string that is secured.

|image3 = Unfinished kudurru h9089.jpg

|width3 = 129

|alt3=Engraving on boundary marker showing long-necked lute and player

|caption3 = C. 12th century BC, Kassite kudurru showing long-necked lute. Tassels visible. Discovered in Susa, where it was carried as a war trophy.

|footer =The earliest lute image dates back to a carved seal, made before 3000 BC. Before that image was acquired by the British Museum, the earliest lute images were on carved seals dating back to between 2334 and 2000 BC.Dumbrill, pages 321-236 These were lutes with long necks (compared to the lutes' bodies), as were most lutes depicted in the 3000 years BC. A few instruments in Dumbrill's book have necks which are shorter, or have wide bodies without distinct necks, short lutes.Dumbrill pages 329, 330, 337, 343

}}

The most ancient lutes had long necks. These survived into the modern era as the tanbur, which Sachs said "faithfully preserved the outer appearance of the ancient lutes of Babylonia and Egypt".{{cite book |last=Sachs |first=Curt |date=1940 |title=The History of Musical Instruments |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach|url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |pages=[https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach/page/255 255–257] |isbn=978-0-393-02068-7}} Sachs, one of those who created the widespread system of musical instrument classification idea today, categorized long lutes with a "pierced lute" and "long neck lute". The pierced lute had a neck made from a stick that pierced the body (as in the ancient Egyptian long-neck lutes, and the modern African gunbrī).{{cite book |last=Sachs |first=Curt |date=1940 |title=The History of Musical Instruments |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach|url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |pages=[https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach/page/102 102–103] |isbn=978-0-393-02068-7}} The long lute had an attached neck, and included the sitar, tanbur and tar (dutār 2 strings, setār 3 strings, čatār 4 strings, pančtār 5 strings).

Musicologist Richard Dumbrill today uses the word lute more categorically to discuss instruments that existed millennia before the term "lute" was coined.{{Cite book|title=The archaeomusicology of the Ancient Near East|author=Dumbrill, Richard J. |date=2005|publisher=Trafford|pages=305–310|isbn=978-1-4120-5538-3|location=Victoria, British Columbia |oclc=62430171 |quote=The long-necked lute would have stemmed from the bow-harp and eventually became the tunbur; and the fat-bodied smaller lute would have evolved into the modern Oud ... the lute pre-dated the lyre which can therefore be considered as a development of the lute, rather than the contrary, as had been thought until quite recently. ... Thus the lute not only dates but also locates the transition from musical protoliteracy to musical literacy.}} Dumbrill documented more than 3000 years of iconographic evidence for the lutes in Mesopotamia, in his book The Archaeomusicology of the Ancient Near East. According to Dumbrill, the lute family included instruments in Mesopotamia prior to 3000 BC. He points to a cylinder seal as evidence; dating from c. 3100 BC or earlier (now in the possession of the British Museum) the -seal depicts on one side what is thought to be a woman playing a stick "lute".{{cite web |title=Cylinder Seal |publisher=British Museum |url=https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_1996-1002-1}} Culture period: Late Uruk, Date: c. 3100 BC, Museum number: 41632. Like Sachs, Dumbrill saw length as distinguishing lutes, dividing the Mesopotamian lutes into a long variety and a short.{{sfn|Dumbrill|1998|p=310}} His book does not cover the shorter instruments that became the European lute, beyond showing examples of shorter lutes in the ancient world. He focuses on the longer lutes of Mesopotamia, various types of necked chordophones that developed throughout ancient world: Greek, Egyptian (in the Middle Kingdom), Iranian (Elamite and others), Hittite, Roman, Bulgar, Turkic, Indian, Chinese, Armenian/Cilician cultures. He names among the long lutes, the pandura and the tanbur{{cite book |last=Dumbrill |first=Richard J. |date=2005 |title=The Archaeomusicology of the Ancient Near East |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nlm1Kbc7P5UC&q=dumbrill%2C+long+lutes&pg=PA320 |location=Victoria, British Columbia |publisher=Trafford Publishing |pages=319–320 |isbn=978-1-4120-5538-3 |quote=The long-necked lute in the OED is orthographed as tambura; tambora, tamera, tumboora; tambur(a) and tanpoora. We have an Arabic Õunbur; Persian tanbur; Armenian pandir; Georgian panturi. and a Serbo-Croat tamburitza. The Greeks called it pandura; panduros; phanduros; panduris or pandurion. The Latin is pandura. It is attested as a Nubian instrument in the third century BC. The earliest literary allusion to lutes in Greece comes from Anaxilas in his play The Lyre-maker as 'trichordos'. ... According to Pollux, the trichordon (sic) was Assyrian and they gave it the name pandoura. ... These instruments survive today in the form of the various Arabian tunbar.}}

Experts who study the people from ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia region argue as to which people the long-necked people originated. Candidates include "East Semites" of Akkad, peoples in Elam and "West Semites".{{cite journal |last1= Turnbull|first1=Harvey |date= July 1972|title= The Origin of the Long-Necked Lute|journal= The Galpin Society Journal |volume= 25|pages= 58–66|doi= 10.2307/841337|jstor=841337}} The instrument was probably distributed by the Hittites, Hurrians and Kassites, rather than invented by them.

Examples from 2334 to 2000 BC (Uruk period 3) exist from Ischali, Eshnunna (Tell Asmar), Kish, Mesopotamia, Iran, Iraq, Tello, Susa.{{harvnb|Dumbrill|1998|pp=321–344}} Later examples exist from 2000 to 1500 BC (Uruk period 4). Examples were found in Khafage, Mari, Isin or Larsa, Iran, Babylon, Tell Mamabaqat Syria, Susa, and Alaca Huyuk. In period 5 from 1500 to 1000 BC, the Egyptians acquired the lute and their art also contributed to our knowledge, as well as actual lutes found in graves.

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=center

|header=A tradition of singing and dancing girls, wine, women and song

| align = right

|image3=Girl tuning Egyptian lute at Rekhmire.jpg

|caption3=Musician tuning her lute, pulling the string upward from below while the hand at the top secures the tension. Tomb of Rekhmire, 18th Dynasty.

|width3=141

|alt3=Girl tuning her Egyptian lute

| image2 =Egyptian 18th Dynasty - Musicians and a Dancer from the Tomb of Nakht New Kingdom.jpg

| width2 = 155

| alt2 = Egyptian lute player 1422–1411 BC

| caption2 = Three musicians, Tomb of Nakht, Thebes, 18th Dynasty, 1422–1411 BC. The lute-player's lute has two strings (indicated by tassels) and lines where frets are on modern instruments.

| image1 = Nubian lute.jpg | width1 = 150

| alt1 = Egyptian pierced lute 1390–1295 BC

| caption1 = Egyptian lute, 18th Dynasty, 1390–1295 BC

|footer= From China to Central Asia and India to Egypt, artwork shows women entertaining with music and alcohol.

Egypt— The Egyptians acquired the lute with singing and dancing girls, as tribute from conquered territories, shown in a 1422 BC painting.{{cite book |last=Sachs |first=Curt |date=1940 |title=The History of Musical Instruments |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach|url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |pages=[https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach/page/86 86–87] |isbn=978-0-393-02068-7}} The tradition of exchanging female performers between countries was long lived.

China— In China, more than 11,000 slaves specializing in entertainment—including music dance and instrumentals—had their own section in the capital, Changan, during the Tang dynasty (618–960 AD){{cite book |last=Myers |first=John E. |date=1992 |title=The Way of the Pipa: Structure and Imagery in Chinese Lute Music |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=avjpd2zHZSgC&pg=PA12 |publisher= Kent State University Press |page=11 |isbn= 978-0-87338-455-1}} Slaves were among the most commonly traded commodity carried by merchants on the Silk Road and their numbers included dancers and musicians.{{cite book |last=Hansen |first=Valerie |title=Les Sogdiens en Chine|chapter= The Impact of the Silk Road Trade |page = 291 |chapter-url=https://history.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/hansen-silk-road-trade.pdf#page=9 |publisher=École Française d'Extrême Orient |year=2005 |location=Paris |issn= 1269-8067 |isbn= 2-85539-653-0 |quote=The scale-fee tax receipts do not cover sales of animals or slaves, two of the most frequently traded goods on the Silk Road}}{{cite book |title=Sogdian Traders, A History by Étienne de la Vaissière |translator= James Ward|page= 275 |quote=We must also include slaves. ... Above all, in the Chinese capitals the Sogdians specialized in the importation of young female servers, musicians, singers and dancers who pleased the fashionable quarters of Chang'an.}}

Arabia, Persia and Islamic Countries— The commerce in singing girls (qiyan) between the countries of the Near East, accompanied by their instruments, gave music an "international, interoriental character", which blended as Islam spread from the Malayan Archipelago in Asia to Spain.{{cite book |last=Sachs |first=Curt |date=1940 |title=The History of Musical Instruments |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach|url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |pages=[https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach/page/245 245]–246|isbn=978-0-393-02068-7}} Under both the Umayyads and Abbasids they were "highly accomplished, not only in music, but in other departments of culture" and trained in schools by virtuosi.{{cite book |last= Farmer|first= Henry George|date=1929 |title=A History of Arabian Music |location=Hertford, Herts |publisher= Stephen Austin & Sons, Ltd. |page= 102}} In the "Days of Idolatry" among the Arabs, singing girls were common, into the era of Muhammad (570–632 AD){{cite book |last= Farmer|first= Henry George|date=1929 |title=A History of Arabian Music |location=Hertford, Herts |publisher= Stephen Austin & Sons, Ltd. |pages=3–4, 9–13}} They were part of "the household of every Arab of social standing", and "attached to the taverns for the entertainment of the visitors". In the 430s AD, Persian king Bahram Ghur visited the court of the Ghassanids, where he listened to girls from the Byzantine Empire and from Al-Hira sing music from their homes, accompanied by the barbat, a Central Asian instrument. The instruments accompanying the singers "lost their regional character" by the 7th century AD. It should be pointed out that not all the women singing and playing lutes were slaves. Although used by Persian royalty in the days before Muhammed, the harem was not part of the Bedouin culture at that time, and free women "joined in the music of the family or tribal festivities with their instruments". It was a time of the "badawī Arab". A secular people then, for them "love, wine, gambling, hunting, the pleasure of song and romance ... wit and wisdom" were all important.

File:Dancers and musicians on a Sasanian bowl.jpg bowl, 5th to 7th centuries AD. Lute player (far left).]]

}}

Sumerians, Babylonians, Kassites, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks all ruled the Mesopotamian area between Tigris and Euphrates rivers where the earliest examples of lutes have survived in clay and stone artwork.{{cite book |last=Sachs |first=Curt |date=1940 |title=The History of Musical Instruments |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach|url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |pages=[https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach/page/67 67]–68|isbn=978-0-393-02068-7}} Sachs described the Mesopotamian lutes as having "very small bodies, long necks with many frets, two strings attached without pegs and were played with a plectron".{{cite book |last=Sachs |first=Curt |date=1940 |title=The History of Musical Instruments |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach|url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |pages=[https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach/page/82 82–83]|isbn=978-0-393-02068-7}} The long lute entered Egypt after its conquest of Southwest Asia, when it began receiving tribute in the form of "singing and dancing-girls with their instruments", illustrated in paintings at Tell El-Amarna.

The paintings of the Egyptian lutes are detailed enough to provide a better understanding of ancient long lutes. Furthermore, original lutes survived in tombs, some still with strings attached. The Egyptian pierced-lutes had a carved wooden bowl for the instrument's body, "usually oval", covered with rawhide. A stick which acted as the instrument's neck pierced the instrument's body. The stick was threaded through cuts in the top of the rawhide to the end of the bowl. It was attached to the strings through a "triangular opening cut in the skin" at the bottom of the bowl. Besides being woven through the skin-soundboard, the stick was supported underneath by "wooden crosspieces" that ran crosswise underneath the stick, to the edges of the bowl on either side.{{cite book |last=Sachs |first=Curt |date=1940 |title=The History of Musical Instruments |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach|url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |pages=[https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach/page/102 102–103]|isbn=978-0-393-02068-7}} The strings were "wound around the top of the handle" and tied with thongs, the tassels visible in some surviving artwork.

Nora E. Scott gave more details about the Egyptian lute's construction, saying that the lute that belonged to Har-Mose, 1500 BC, had two bridges, the triangular bridge at the bottom, attached to the stick and protruding through the skin, and another on the neck.{{cite journal |last1=Scott |first1=Nora E. |title=The Lute of the Singer Har-Mose|url= https://www.metmuseum.org/pubs/bulletins/1/pdf/3257123.pdf.bannered.pdf |journal= The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin|page=162 |access-date= 1 September 2018}}|quote=The Lute of the Singer Har-Mose{{cite web

|url=https://www.insure4music.co.uk/blog/2020/02/10/the-history-of-the-acoustic-guitar/

|title=The History Of The Acoustic Guitar

|author=

|date=2020-02-10

|website=insure4music.co.uk

|publisher=Insure 4 Music

|access-date=2022-08-22

|quote=the oldest surviving guitar-like instrument is a tanbur from Egypt, dating back to circa 1500 BC. This instrument is a fretted lute with three strings, a long neck and a pear-shaped sound box. It was owned by a court singer by the name of Har-Mose, who sang for the Egyptian queen Hatshepsut.

}} The string passed over the second bridge and was tied down to the neck with linen cord to keep its tension. The player tuned the lute by pulling the string tight over the second bridge and tightening the linen cord to hold. The second bridge corresponds in function to the nut on a guitar or mandolin. The soundboard skin could have as many as six soundholes.

Sachs points out one significant difference between the Egyptian lutes and other pierced lutes of the ancient world. The non-Egyptian lutes had a stick handle piercing the bowl on both ends (spike lutes), rather than having one end resting inside the bowl (tang lutes). He also gave consideration to African skin-topped instruments that survived into the 20th century, noting that those in Morocco and Senegambia, such as the gunbri, might be descendants. He said the instruments "degenerated" from the Egyptian instruments, but then were developed after the Arab conquest of North Africa. Other differences he noted include different body shapes, attaching strings to "lateral pegs" (rather than tying strings directly to the neck) and reducing the instrument's size.

File:Plaque with musician playing a lute, Ischali, Isin-Larsa period, 2000-1600 BC, baked clay - Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago - DSC07344.JPG|Iraq. Musician playing a lute, Tell Ishchali, Isin-Larsa period, 2000-1600 BC, baked clay. Hanging tassels are part of harness to hold strings, one for each string.

File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Langhalsluit met 2 snaren TMnr 600-12.jpg|Modern lute, with same shape as Tell Ishchali lute. Bowl is a river-turtle shell. Also has similar sound holes, size and shape as Byzantine pandura. Egypt, pre-1930.

File:Orthostaten (14731138433).jpg|Lute in art found at Zincirli Höyük, 10th-9th century BC, at the Pergamom museum, Berlin.

File:Museum of Anatolian Civilizations 1320164 nevit.jpg|Alacahöyük 1399–1301 BC, Hittite lute with in-curved sides, and frets on neck. Built like the Egyptian (skin top, stick woven through skin, sound holes parallel to stick-neck, one tassel to tie each string.). Unlike Egyptian lutes, stick pokes out at both ends).

File:Parthian lute player.jpg|Parthian Empire, long-necked lute or tanbur, c. 3 BC – 3 AD. Neck ends within body.

File:Indian lute, Shunga period, 2nd century B.C.jpg|Indian lute, Bengal, Shunga period, 2nd century B.C.

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=center

| align = right

| image1 = Muse with Πανδούρα Pandura Pandora Panduris ancient Greece old guitar Athens IV BCE siglo IV AEC.jpg

| width1 = 126

| alt1 = Mantineia pandura

| caption1 = Pandura at Mantineia, c. 330–320 BC

| image2 =Pandoura 002.jpg

| width2 = 155

| alt2 = Tanagra pandura c. 3rd century BC

| caption2 =Pandura at Tanagra, Greece, c. 3rd century BC

|image3=Guitar-type instrument depicted on an ancient Roman sarcophagus in marble, British Museum number 1805,0703.132.jpg

|width3=147

|alt3=Roman guitar-type instrument, 3rd century AD

|caption3=Roman guitar-type instrument depicted on a Roman sarcophagus dated to the 3rd century AD.{{Cite web|title=sarcophagus

|url=https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/G_1805-0703-132|access-date=2023-02-04|website=The British Museum|language=en}}
The British Museum says this sarcophagus in its collection was uncovered near Rome and was probably made in Rome itself, and date-estimates it to the 3rd century AD.

|image4= Mérida pandurium.jpg

|width4= 150

|alt4= Mérida Spain pandura

|caption4= Roman pandura, 2nd century AD, found at Mérida, Spain

}}

File:Terracotta Figure of a Woman Playing a Pandoura, Cyprus, circa 300 BC.jpg

The long-necked lute made the journey to Greece as well; in the 5th century BC the Egyptian lute made it into Greek sculpture, recognizable as a pierced lute, stick running into an oval body, with triangular bridge at base of instrument and two lines of soundholes parallel to the stick, on either side of it.{{cite web |url= http://www.shlomomusic.com/pandoura.htm |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110929033820/http://www.shlomomusic.com/pandoura.htm |url-status= dead |archive-date= 29 September 2011 |title= Pandoura: The Greco-Roman Lute of Antiquity |last= Pestcoe|first= Schlomo|website= shlomomusic.com|access-date=29 September 2011 |quote=[see image, top of page] Akin to the Egyptian lutes, the pandoura seen here appears to a hollowed-our wooden body and animal skin head (soundtable), with two lines of small soundholes running parallel on either side of the instrument's stick neck. The conventional wisdom is that the pandoura was a 3-stringed lute, as were the Egyptian lutes. Even more remarkable is the pandoura's triangle-shaped tailpiece, which is also pretty much the same as those found on the Ancient Egyptian lutes.}} A century later at Mantineia, the pierced lute would be changed, with a broader neck, somewhat shorter than the earlier Egyptian style lute, but still a long-necked instrument, with the neck longer than the soundbox.{{cite web |url= http://www.shlomomusic.com/pandoura.htm |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110929033820/http://www.shlomomusic.com/pandoura.htm |url-status= dead |archive-date= 29 September 2011 |title= Pandoura: The Greco-Roman Lute of Antiquity |last= Pestcoe|first= Schlomo|website= shlomomusic.com|access-date=29 September 2011 |quote=[see image, second from top] The Mantineia Base (c. 330–320 BC), shows a muse playing a variant of the pandoura with an elongated triangle body. The top of the neck finishes in an inverted triangle as well.}} A second version at Tanagra in 200 BC was carved from a single piece of wood, neck and soundbox, pear-shaped much as the short-lutes that later arrived from Central Asia.{{cite web |url= http://www.shlomomusic.com/pandoura.htm |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110929033820/http://www.shlomomusic.com/pandoura.htm |url-status= dead |archive-date= 29 September 2011 |title= Pandoura: The Greco-Roman Lute of Antiquity |last= Pestcoe|first= Schlomo|website= shlomomusic.com|access-date=29 September 2011 |quote=[see image, 4th image] Tanagra, Greece (c. 3rd century BC). This lute is a small instrument with a narrow pear-shaped body that has a shallow bowl-back.}} Still another form of the pandura would have a one-piece carved triangular body with skin stretched across it.{{cite web |url= http://www.shlomomusic.com/pandoura.htm |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110929033820/http://www.shlomomusic.com/pandoura.htm |url-status= dead |archive-date= 29 September 2011 |title= Pandoura: The Greco-Roman Lute of Antiquity |last= Pestcoe|first= Schlomo|website= shlomomusic.com|access-date=29 September 2011 |quote=[see 3rd image] Tanagra, Greece (c. 3rd Century BCE) ... one being played by Eros, the terracotta figurine seen on top right from Eretria, Greece (c. 330–200 BC). Eros' pandoura also has an elongated triangle body.}}

Sachs describes the pandura as having three strings, tied still to the neck as there were no pegs, and a small body. The Greeks called the lute by multiple names, including trichordon (3-stringed) and pandura. He looks as the latter name as evidence that the instrument was foreign to Greece, introduced from the East; the name was derived from pan-tur, a Sumerian name meaning small bow. Sachs said that the instrument could be called "alternatively an Assyrian, a Cappadocian and an Egyptian instrument".

While examples exist across 1100 years, the pandura was rarely covered in Greek and Roman art, compared to the cithara, harp and lyre. One possible reason had to do with cultural values. In the Mesopotamia and in Egypt, the lute had been associated with dancing girls and with entertainment. Sumerian pottery and clay statues show that the lute players were often naked performers, with sexuality a part of the performance. The Egyptian girls are similarly scantily clad, dancing for their lords and ladies.

A millennium later at Rome in the 5th century AD, the pandura was a low-class instrument with a "disreputable association with frivolity and low merry-making".{{cite web |url= http://www.shlomomusic.com/pandoura.htm |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110929033820/http://www.shlomomusic.com/pandoura.htm |url-status= dead |archive-date= 29 September 2011 |title= Pandoura: The Greco-Roman Lute of Antiquity |last= Pestcoe|first= Schlomo|website= shlomomusic.com|access-date=29 September 2011 |quote= It apparently had somewhat of a disreputable association with frivolity and low merry-making and was considered to be an instrument best suited for the tavern rather than "polite society". Likewise, unlike the lyre, the pandura seems to have been an instrument favored by professional musicians who performed the vernacular "pop" music of the day.}} A story about St Theodoulos the Stylite says that he was tested by God, forced to associate with Cornelius the pandouros (pandura player). According to the story, "Theodoulos is horrified at being associated with a man from the theatre" and more horrified to find "Cornelius at the Hippodrome, holding his instrument with one hand, and with the other, a bareheaded prostitute".{{cite web |url= http://insaph.kcl.ac.uk/ala2004/narrative/sec-VIII.html |title=Aphrodisius in Late Antiquity, Section VIII: Christian prayers and invocations |last= Rouché|first= Charlotte |website= insaph.kcl.ac.uk|access-date= 2 September 2018|quote= VIII.3 Asterius' inscription, 113,. ... The profession is among those listed by K. Mentzou, quoting, most revealingly, the life of St Theodoulos the Stylite; when God is testing the saint, he tells him that he will inherit the Kingdom with Cornelius the pandouros from the city of Damascus. 6 Theodoulos is horrified at being associated with a man from the theatre, τοῦ ἀπὸ σκήνης; and he is even more horrified when he goes to Damascus and finds Cornelius at the Hippodrome, holding his instrument with one hand, and with the other, a bareheaded prostitute.}}

Lack of artwork does not necessarily mean absence of the lute in Roman and Greek society. What images have survived of Greek and Roman pandura players are from high-class art. In the statuary, plaques and a mosaic in the Byzantine emperor's palace, players are dignified and clothed. The art, made for the wealthy upper classes doesn't show the lower-class places where Theodoulos was shocked.

File:North African long-lute 4th century.jpg|Coptic, Byzantine or Egyptian long-necked lute, 4th century AD, Qasr Libya (the Byzantine city of Theodoureas)

File:Coptic lute.jpg|Coptic, Byzantine or Egyptian lute, c. 1–500 AD

File:Coptic lute backside.jpg|Coptic, Byzantine or Egyptian lute, c. 1–500 AD

File:Coptic lute without soundboard.jpg|Coptic, Byzantine or Egyptian lute, c. 1–500 AD, neck is hollow like rubab neck

File:Byzantine Pandore.gif|Byzantine pandura, 6th-century AD depiction on mosaic in the Great Palace in Constantinople.{{cite journal|last1=Brett|first1=Gerard|date=1942|title=The Mosaic of the Great Palace in Constantinople|journal=The Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes|volume=5|pages=34–43, Plate 9-a|doi=10.2307/750447|jstor=750447|s2cid=192376568}} The instrument has three strings and is being played with a plectrum.

File:Bear with lute-family instrument.jpg|Unknown lute-family instrument, 723-743 AD{{cite web|title= Destellos de color en el desierto; la restauración de Qusair Amra [translation: Flashes of color in the desert; the restoration of Qusair Amra ]|date= 13 October 2013|url= https://www.nationalgeographic.com.es/naturaleza/grandes-reportajes/destellos-de-color-en-el-desierto-2_7567/amp|quote= Inscription II in ancient Kufic script, discovered during the restoration, has allowed the construction to be dated and attributed to Al-Walid II ... dated with some certainty before he ascended the throne in 743}} Qusayr 'Amra. Byzantine/Islamic culture was mixing at time of painting.

File:Saint Aemillian of Cogilla herding sheep with cowhown and lute.jpg|1060-1080 A.D., Spain. Saint Aemilian of Cogolla herding sheep with cowhown and 3-stringed lute. Lute has similar shape to pandura. Peghead resembles pegheads on cythara in Utrecht Psalter.

File:Cappella Palatina rubab.jpg|Unknown lute-family instrument, possible rubab or Coptic lute. C. 1140 AD, Capella Palatina, Sicily.

{{See also|Tanbur}}

Tanburs have been present in Mesopotamia since the Akkadian era, or the 3rd millennium BC.{{cite NewGrove2001|title=Tanbūr|last=Scheherezade Qassim Hassan|last2=Morris|first2=R. Conway|last3=Baily|first3=John|last4=During|first4=Jean|volume=xxv|pages=61–62}}

Three figurines have been found in Susa that belong to 1500 BC, and in hands of one of them is a tanbur-like instrument.{{cite web| url=http://www.encyclopaediaislamica.com/madkhal2.php?sid=3919| title=تنبور (یا تمبور/ طنبور)| publisher=Encyclopaedia Islamica| access-date=March 3, 2013| url-status=dead| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130623115106/http://www.encyclopaediaislamica.com/madkhal2.php?sid=3919| archive-date=June 23, 2013}}

Also an image on the rocks near Mosul that belong to about 1000 BC shows tanbur players.

Playing the tanbur was common at least by the late Parthian era and Sassanid period,Jean During, Spirit of Sounds : The Unique Art of Ostad Elahi (1895–1974), Associated University Press, {{ISBN|978-0-8453-4884-0}}, {{ISBN|0-8453-4884-1}} and the word 'tanbur' is found in middle Persian and Parthian language texts, for instance in Drakht-i Asurig, Bundahishn, Kar-Namag i Ardashir i Pabagan, and Khosrow and Ridag.:fa:خسرو و ریدگ

In the 10th century AD Al-Farabi described two types of tanburs found in Persia, a Baghdad tunbūr, distributed south and west of Baghdad, and a Khorasan tunbūr. This distinction may be the source of modern differentiation between Arabic instruments, derived from the Baghdad tunbūr, and those found in northern Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sindh and Turkey, from the Khorasan tunbūr.

The Persian name spread widely, eventually taking in long-necked string instruments used in Central Asian music such as the Dombura and the classical Turkish tambur as well as the Kurdish tembûr.{{cite NewGrove2001|title=Kurdish music|last=Shiloah|first=Amnon|volume=xiv|page=40}} Until the early 20th century, the names chambar and jumbush were applied to instruments in northern Iraq. In India the name was applied to the tanpura (tambura), a fretless drone lute. Tanbur traveled through Al-Hirah to the Arabian Peninsula and in the early Islam period went to the European countries. Tanbur was called 'tunbur' or 'tunbureh/tunbura' in Al-Hirah, and in Greek it was named tambouras, then went to albania as tampura, in Russia it was named domra, in Siberia and Mongolia as dombra, and in Byzantine Empire was named pandura/bandura. It travelled through Byzantine Empire to other European countries and was called pandura, mandura, bandura, etc.

Later the Iranian (Kurdish) tanbur became associated with the music of the Ahl-e Haqq, a primarily Kurdish ghulat religious movement similar to a Sufi order, in Kurdish areas and in the Lorestān and Sistan va Baluchestan provinces of Iran, where it is called the 'tembûr'.{{cite NewGrove2001|title=Tanbur|last=Scheherezade Qassim Hassan|last2=Morris|first2=R. Conway|last3=Baily|first3=John|last4=During|first4=Jean|volume=xxv|pages=61–62}}

Persians have another naming system for differentiating different styles of the instrument, using the word tar with a number for the number of strings or courses of strings.{{cite book |last=Sachs |first=Curt |date=1940 |title=The History of Musical Instruments |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach|url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |pages=[https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach/page/255 255–257]|isbn=978-0-393-02068-7}} Instruments named this way include the dutar (2 strings/courses), setar (three strings/courses), cartar (4 strings/courses) and panctar (five strings/courses). A course is multiple strings played together, so that a setar can have 6 strings altogether, but the strings are divided in three rows or courses.

The pegs on the long-lutes are different than on short lutes (such as the oud) where a pegbox has pegs accessed from the sides. On long lutes, some are inserted from the front, some from the side. Sachs felt that the pegs were an indication of mixed origins for tanbur. Front and side elements came from Arabo/Persian instruments, rear pegs from Turkish.

The tanbur family includes

• bağlama (Saz)
• bouzouki related to tanburs but also of European lute tradition
• çifteli
• cura
• dombra Dombura shares some of its characteristics with the Central Asian komuz and dutar.
• Dombura in Turkish,
• Dombıra, in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan,
• Dambura or Danbura in northern Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan,[1]
• Hazara Dambura or Hazaragi Dambura The Dambura which is played by Hazara people mostly in Afghanistan.[2]
• Dumbura in Bashkir and Tatar,
• Dombor in Mongolia,
• Dombyra in Kazakhstan,
• Dombira or 冬不拉 (Dongbula) in Xinjiang, China
• domra Russian instrument, recreated in the 1800s, modern version is shorter necked like mandolin
• balalaika Russian instrument. Related to domra.
• dutar
• komuz (not same as kobyz), Kyrgyz instrument. Placement of this instrument in tanbur family not certain. A skin-topped version has existed.
• pandura
• sato (bowed)
• setar looks very similar to tanbur. Has three courses of strings (normally four strings total, but as many as six)
• Chitrali sitar
• Sataer bowed instrument
• setor
• sitar
• tambura, played in Balkan peninsula, possibly identical to tamburica
• tamboori an Indian melodic instrument similar to a Tanpura
• tambouras played in Greece
• tamburica any member of a family of long-necked lutes popular in Eastern and Central Europe
• tanbur, tanbur, tanbūr, Tambur a long-necked, string instrument originating in the Southern or Central Asia (Mesopotamia and Persia/Iran). Three strings total (not courses).
• Iranian tanbur (Kurdish tanbur), used in Yarsan rituals
• Turkish tambur, instrument played in Turkey
• Yaylı tambur, also played in Turkey
• tanpura, a drone instrument played in India
• tar
• tembor longer than most
• tzouras

Instruments not included on this list provide a chance to think about the instruments' evolution. Early Mesopotamian long-necked lutes would have had skin tops and sound-bowls that were either carved from wood or made from a turtle shell. There was a divergence; modern tanburs have wood tops, while rubabs have skin tops. One instrument straddled the line, the Byzantine or Coptic lute. These appear to have been successors of the middle east long-lute tradition, in which Egypt participated. They have a wooden soundboard (a tanbur trait), however, the neck is hollow (a rubab trait). Also the Byzantine lute from Qasr Libya, in Libya, has barbs on its top, a rubab trait. The Coptic lute also overlaps with an instrument that Curt Sachs called a pandura, the instrument illustrated in the mosaic in the Byzantine emperor's palace in Constantinople.

The other long lutes not included here are because of their rubab orientation are the dotara, dramyin, rawap and pamiri rubab. They have soundboards of skin and may also have hollow necks.

File:Novruz Baku03.jpg|bağlama or Azerbaijani saz (left)

File:SAZ Instrument 5270.jpg|bağlama or saz

File:Ŝargijo.png|Balkans. Šargija, closely related to Balkan tambura

File:DSC 3510 athens Bouzouki player street july 2018.jpg|Greek bouzouki

File:Çifteli- Чифтелија е традиционален, албански, народен, жичан инструмент..jpg|Gheg Albanian çifteli

File:Tamburasaz-Baglamasaz.jpg|bağlama (right) and cura

File:Celebration of Nowruz shared by several countries, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Russian Federation, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Turkey. 1.jpg|Dombra or dambura

File:Jean-Paul Flandrin - Odalisque with Slave - cropped to show dutar.jpg|Dutar (four strings in two courses)

File:Joueur de dutar ouzbek.jpg|Uzbek dutar. Also Tajik

File:Kyrgyz students plays the Komuz.JPG|Kirgiz komuz

File:Hossein Alizadeh at Vahdat Hall 01.jpg|Iranian setar, musician Hossein Alizadeh

File:Vrakoforos Tabouras.jpg|Greek tambouras

File:Szajci.jpg|Southern/Central European tamburica

File:Pastimes of Central Asians. A Musician Playing a Tambur, a Long-necked Stringed Instrument WDL10828.png|Central Asian tanbur/tambur, 1865–1872

File:Uyghur tambur.jpg|Uyghurs Tembor

File:Ghobad ghobadi45677.jpg|Iranian/Kurdish tanbur. Musician and luthier Ghobad Ghobadi (تنبورقبادی), a face of Yarsanism plays a Kurdish tanbur. Ghobadi makes tanburs in the Yarsan tradition.{{cite web |first= Dariush |last= Sohrabi |trans-title= Master Qobad Qobadi |title= استاد قباد قبادی |language=fa |url= https://www.facebook.com/groups/1426545070905082/permalink/2057477267811856/?locale=hu_HU |quote= Master Qobad Qobadi...A scholar of the language...a tanbur player and tanbur maker...Master Qobad Qobadi was born in...the Dalahu region, in the Qolkhani tribe...devoted himself to learning the tanbur and the maqamat yari...Perhaps the turning point in Qobad Qobadi's life can be considered his entry into the field of Yarsan tanbur making...Yari's experience and knowledge of playing and his acquaintance with the noble authorities, along with the training in the techniques of tanbur making, soon turned the famous instrument named Qobad Qobadi into one of the most famous tanburs in Yarsan... In such a way that many masters and players of the instrument consider his instrument to be one of the highest quality tanburs used.}}

File:Osman Hamdi Bey - Two Musician Girls.jpg|Ottoman tambur, also known as Turkish tambur, 1880

File:YaylıTambur of DrOzanYarman.jpg|Yaylı tambur a variation of Turkish tambur, metal and uses a bow

File:Nishat Khan Varanasi 2009.jpg|Indian sitar

File:Shubha Mudgal in playing the Tanpura (2527339532).jpg|Indian tanpura resembles a sitar but has no frets

{{multiple image|caption_align=center

|header_align=center

|header=Frets on lutes

| align = right

| image3 = Citole Robert De Lisle Psalter.jpg

| width3 = 147

| alt3 = England, c. 1310 AD. Angel holding a citole

| caption3 = England, c. 1310 AD. Angel holding a citole. There are frets drawn over the body of the instrument, where it is unlikely that gut frets could be placed.

| image4 = 13th century rubab from ceramic plate, Rayy ( Iran ) ca 1200 CE.jpg

| width4 = 125

| alt4 = artwork on ceramic plate showing rubab with frets

| caption4 = Ravy, (near Tehran), Iran, c. 1200 AD rubab with frets.

| image2 = Utrechts-Psalter PSALM-145-PSALM-146 lyre and cythara.jpg

| width2 = 130

| alt2 = picture of lute player from Utrecht Psalter

| caption2= France, Utrecht Psalter, c. 850. During the Carolingian Renaissance an Anglo Saxon artist drew an image of a cythara with frets.

| image1 = Pipa player - Yulin Cave 15.jpg

| width1 = 210

| alt1 = Pipa, Middle Tang dynasty era (618–907 AD), from the Yulin Caves, cave 15

| caption1= China. Pipa with frets, Middle Tang dynasty era (618–907 AD), from the Yulin Caves, cave 15

}}

The lute is tied to the mathematics related to pitches. Unlike the harp, in which a string produces a single note, a lute string produces more than one note. Placing a finger on a string divides the string into measurable parts. Measuring those parts leads to mathematical ratios, useful in placing frets on the neck of the lute.Dumbril, page 118 An instrument such as the setar uses moveable frets to hit whole tones, half tones and quarter tones.

It isn't known when frets were first used. Some ancient images discovered in the Middle East from before 1000 BC appear to show frets. These are rare and most images do not show frets on the early lutes.Dumbrill, 1998, pp. 337, 338

A rare example from about the 3rd century AD was discovered in 1907 in the Niya ruins in Xinjiang, China, a broken lute's neck with two gut frets intact.{{cite news |title= Lute |newspaper= The British Museum |url=https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/A_1907-1111-90 |quote= Fragment of a wooden lute. This is only the neck of the instrument, the body has not survived ... There are marks showing at the top of the fingerboard where two strands of gut, probably with a third strand on top of them to raise the height of the strings, served as a nut. The surviving doubled strand of gut was a fret, and the slightly thicker single strand may have been a fret for higher notes ... Registration number 1907,1111.90}} The neck and pegbox of the lute are similar to the lute painted on the wall in the Dingjiazha Tomb No. 5 (384–441 AD), which also has frets. Buddhist artworks from the 6th-10th centuries AD in the Mogao Caves (558-907 AD) and Yulin Caves (618-907 AD) appear to have frets. Some long lutes in the Utrecht Psalter (c. 850 AD) in France also appear fretted, as do citoles from Spain in the Cantigas de Santa Maria (c. 1280).

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=center

|header=

| align = right

| image2 = Hittite lute from Alacahöyük 1399–1301 BC cropped.png

| width2 = 155

| alt2 = Hittite lute

| caption2=

| image1 =Hittite lute from Alacahöyük 1399–1301 BC colored to show frets.jpg

| width1 = 155

| alt1 = Hittite lute colorized

| caption1 =Turkey. Hittite lute from Alacahöyük 1399–1301 BC colored to estimate frets.

|footer = Relief sculpture offers clues to frets, but may be difficult to see. In this image, frets on the body may not be frets, but loops where the stick goes in and out of the skin soundboard. Holes above and below the stick are sound holes.

}}

Richard Dumbrill talked about the earliest known systems of musical notes, and what makes them feel natural.{{harvnb|Dumbrill|1998|pp=16–18}} He concluded that what makes a mode "feel intrinsic is centuries of usage". For the Sumerians, natural was a five-note system. For the Akkadians, natural was a nine-note system and then a seven-note system, "the basis for our modern [western] system".

With a seeming infinite number of possible pitches to create modes, musicians had to choose which notes to use, and which to play together. One way of bring order to the infinite number of tones was to examine music with mathematics.

The Sumerians and Akkadians, the Greeks, and the Persians all used math to create notes used on lutes and lyres and other stringed instruments. Using the idea that a plucked or bowed string produces a note, they noticed the difference in tone when a string is stopped. "The great discovery" was hearing the double octave, that halving a string produces a note one octave above the string.{{cite book |last=Dumbrill |first=Richard J. |title=The Archaeomusicology of the Ancient Near East |url= https://www.academia.edu/875113|publisher=Tadema Press, London |date=1998 |pages=ii–iii |postscript= This "Foreword", from the second edition, was written by Ernest MacClain, City University, New York. The book title is of second edition. The first edition was entitled 'The Musicology and Organology of the Ancient Near East'.}} Written as a ratio 2:1.

They measured the ratios of string lengths on one side and the other of where the string was pressed, creating ratios. Those ratios allowed them to compare sounds, for example third intervals, fourths, fifths. They were able to tune one string against another in those intervals on lutes, lyres, harps, zithers. Those lutes that had frets gave them the further ability to reliably find those intervals on a played string, by marking points on the neck at mathematically spaced distances based on the ratios. Unlike modern instruments, where frets may be permanently fixed into the neck, as on a guitar, the older instruments used gut strings tied around the neck for frets, and this made their instruments adjustable. Early musicians could tune their instruments to different modes. Lute players could tune the strings to different intervals, and could further adjust the frets for the modes.

:See: Transmission of the Greek Classics

Western scholarship has traditionally credited the Greeks, including Pythagoras (c. 570 – c. 495 BC), with discovery of this math to determine notes on strings, called Pythagorean tuning,{{cite book|last=Gregory|first=Andrew|date=2015|chapter=The Pythagoreans: Number and Numerology|title=Mathematicians and their Gods: Interactions between Mathematics and Religious Beliefs|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5rhDCQAAQBAJ|editor1-last=Lawrence|editor1-first=Snezana|editor1-link= Snezana Lawrence |editor2-last=McCartney|editor2-first=Mark|location=Oxford, England|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-870305-1|pages=28}}

which covers western tuning based on perfect 5ths and octaves. However, as modern scholars have looked at cuneiform texts, it is clear that the Greeks were not the first; recorded thinking in Mesopotamia about the mathematical ratios of strings predates the Greek thinking by at least 1500 years.Dumbrill, page 18 Furthermore, a form of written music came out of that era, called the Hurrian songs, currently the oldest known written music, and is based on modes of music, recorded in cuneiform string ratios.

Once the Persian and Arab thinkers from the Umayyad and Abbasid periods (7th to 13th centuries AD) had translations of Greek manuscripts, they began to study music as a science as part of "mathematical arts".

Some Muslim musicians came to have access to more than one mathematically created scale, such as the Persian scale, the Arab scale and the Pythagorean scale.{{cite book |last= Farmer|first= Henry George|date=1929 |title=A History of Arabian Music |location=Hertford, Herts |publisher= Stephen Austin & Sons, Ltd. |pages= 149, 152}}

:See: Golden Age of Islam

{{multiple image|caption_align=center

|header_align=center

|header=

| align = right

| image1 = Safi al-Din lute.png

| width1 = 140

| alt1 = Drawing of a lute by Safi al-Din, 1333 A.D.

| caption1 = Iraq. Drawing of a lute by Safi al-Din from a 1333 copy of his book, Kitab al-Adwār.

| image2 = Al-Farabi.png

| width2 = 140

| alt2 = Drawing from Al-Fārābī of a musical instrument, called ""šāh-rūd""

| caption2= Illustration from Al-Fārābī (about 870-950): Kitāb al-mūsīqī al kabīr Drawing of a musical instrument, called ""šāh-rūd"")

|image3=تصميم العود بسبع أوتار للفارابي.jpg

|caption3=Al-Farabi's oud design, with 7 courses (fourteen-strings).

|width3=140

|footer=

}}

The mixing cultures of Central Asia and Arabia produced several thinkers who wrote about music, including something about the lute in their works, including Al-Kindi (c. 801 – c. 873), Ziryab (789–857), Al-Farabi (c. 872 – c. 950), Avicenna (c. 980 – 1037), and Safi al-Din al-Urmawi (1216–1294). They wrote in Arabic, what had become the useful lingua-Franca of their time, and took part in Muslim society and culture. They weren't solely working in the Middle East; Islam was spread wide and some of the thinkers were from Central Asia.

The Arabs had a musical scale, described by al-Farabi, in use by some through the 13th century AD.{{cite journal |last1=Farmer |first1= Henry George|date= April 1937|title= The Lute Scale of Avicenna|journal=The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland |volume= 69|issue= 2|pages=245–246 |doi= 10.1017/S0035869X00085397|jstor= 25201498|s2cid= 163662254}} That tanbar scale, which divided the string into "40 equal parts" may have been a leftover from Babylon and Assyria. However, the Arabs traded with and conquered the Persians, and they adopted Persian scales for their lutes, just as they adopted Persian short-necked lutes.

Ziryab moved from Baghdad to al-Andalus, where he set up a school of music and was one of the first to add a fifth string or course to oud, "between 822 and 852).{{cite journal |last1=Farmer |first1= Henry George|date= April 1937|title= The Lute Scale of Avicenna|journal=The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland |issue= 2|pages=247–248 |jstor= 25201498}} Al-Andalus, where he settled would become a center of musical instrument development for Europe.

Al-Kindi was a polymath who wrote as many as 15 music-related treatises. He was among the first to apply Greek musical theory to Central Asian-Arabian short lutes. He added semi-tones between the nut and the first string. He also added a fifth string to his oud in the east, as Ziryab had done in the west.

Al-Farabi "fully incorporated the works of Aristoxenus and Ptolemy into his theory of tetrachords", and wrote among books in many subjects, the Kitab al-Musiqa al-Kabir, the Major Book of Music, in which he detailed how to tune an oud, using mathematical ratios.{{cite web |url= http://www.chrysalis-foundation.org/Al-Farabi-s_Uds.htm|title=Musical Mathematics on the art and science of acoustic instruments, Chapter 11 |last= Forster|first= Christiano M.L.|website=chrysalis-foundation.org |access-date= 19 September 2018|quote=Before we continue with Al-Farabi's 12-fret 'ud tuning — which results in a 22-tone "double-octave" scale ... Al-Farabi concludes 'After these, no note of the 'ud remains which needs to be reproduced. In each octave, there are twenty-two notes; and these are all the notes used by the 'ud. Some of them are more frequently used than others.'}} He gave instruction for both 10 frets and 12, telling where to place the tied (and moveable) gut-string frets on the neck. His way of tuning allowed a "12-fret 'ud tuning — which results ... 'double-octave' scale", with 22 notes in each octave.

{{multiple image|caption_align=center

|header_align=center

|header=Central Asia to China and Europe

| align = right

| image1 = Bartolomeo Veneto c 1470-1531 Woman Playing a Lute.jpg

| width1 = 140

| alt1 = European lute painting by Bartolomeo Veneto

| caption1 = European lute painting by Bartolomeo Veneto, c. 1500. By the early modern era, European lutes were built from strips of wood and a separate neck.

|image3 = Gandharan Lute.jpg

| width3 = 116

| alt3 = Siddhartha playing the lute, sculpture

| caption3 = "Siddhartha" playing a lute-type instrument. Gandaran art. Date not given for artwork. The era for grey schist art was the 1st–6th centuries AD.{{cite web |url= https://www.photodharma.net/India/Indian-Museum/Indian-Museum.htm|title= Statues and Reliefs in the Indian Museum, Kolkata |author= |website=photodharma.net |access-date=16 August 2018 |quote=Gandhāra School. The Indian Museum, Calcutta houses the largest collection of Gandhāra Sculptures in India. ... The Grey Schist or slate stone sculptures hail mainly from the region lying between Eastern Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan (Peshwar and Rawalpindi districts) and belong to the Gandhāra School which flourished from about the 1st century BC to the 6th century AD. Stucco and teracotta were also used as media from about the 3rd century AD. The art was at its zenith under the patronage of the Kuṣaṇ kings. ... Text adapted from a sign in the Indian Museum}}

| image2 = Barbat or Oud from 7th or 8th Century Iran.jpg

| width2 = 105

| alt2 = Sasanian plate with celebration, includes lute player

| caption2= Tabaristan, Iran, from a decorated dish, Sasanian (7th–8th centuries AD). Marks around edge of lute might indicate a skin top.

| image4 = Female figure as Venus, T'ang dynasty.jpg

| width4 = 135

| alt4 = The lute as the Chinese pipa

| caption4 = Lute or pipa detail from a Tang dynasty painting on silk, 897 AD.

|footer= From Central Asia, the short-necked lute went east to China and west to Europe and Africa by way of Persia and Arabia. The area of origin borders on North India as well, and short-necked lutes can be seen in artwork that are a mixture of Hellenistic and Indian or Kushite art forms, from as early as the 1st to 3rd centuries AD.

}}

Although the oldest iconographic evidence concerning lutes deals with long lutes in Mesopotamia and Egypt, some long-necked lutes are shorter than others. Comparatively, the Greek and Byzantine pandura is shorter than the tanbur, even though both are long lutes. Shorter lutes exist among the long-necked lutes today, including the tanburica, cura and komuz.

A short necked lute does not necessarily a small lute, as a guitar or pipa can be a large instrument. Guitars have a sound box as long as the neck. Some members of the rubab family with their long sound-boxes fit into the group of short-necked lutes.

The line of short-necked lutes developed to the east of Mesopotamia, in Central Asia, places like Bactria and Gandhara. There a short, almond-shaped lute surfaced, carried east and west by Sogdiana merchants, become the Chinese pipa and Middle Eastern oud.{{cite encyclopedia|url=http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/barbat |encyclopedia=Encyclopaedia Iranica |title=Barbat |last=During |first=Jean |date=1988-12-15 |access-date=2012-02-04}}{{cite web |url= https://www.pinterest.com/pin/518195500845626868/ |title=Pakistan, Swat Valley, Gandhara region Lute Player; From a group of Five Celestial Musicians, 4th–5th century Sculpture; Stone, Gray schist, 10 1/8 x 4 3/4 x 2 1/2 in. (25.7 x 12.1 x 6.4 cm)|last1= Kasidah|publisher= Pinterest.com|access-date=March 25, 2015}} Musician playing a 4th-to-5th-century lute, excavated in Gandhara, and part of a Los Angeles County Art Museum collection of Five Celestial Musicians{{cite web |url= http://www.clevelandart.org/art/1980.15|title= Bracket with two musicians 100s, Pakistan, Gandhara, probably Butkara in Swat, Kushan Period (1st century – 320)|publisher= The Cleveland Museum of Art|access-date=March 25, 2015}} Curt Sachs talked about the depictions of Ganharan lutes in art, where they are presented in a mix of "Northwest Indian art" under "a strong Greek influence".{{cite book |last=Sachs |first=Curt |date=1940 |title= The History of Musical Instruments |location= New York |publisher= W. W. Norton & Company |pages=159–161|isbn=978-0-486-17151-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=W615TIDz97UC&q=%22strong+Greek+influence%22&pg=PA159}} The short-necked lutes in these Gandhara artworks were "the venerable ancestor of the Islamic, the Sino-Japanese and the European lute families". He described the Ganhara lutes as having a "pear-shaped body tapering towards the short neck, a frontal stringholder, lateral pegs, and either four or five strings".

While the earliest may be in the Gandhara region, Northern India itself also has ancient short-necked lutes in sculpture, such as one found at Pawāyā, Madhya Pradesh, India, that dates to the Gupta period, 400–499 AD.{{cite web|url= https://puratattva.in/2011/07/11/pawaya-glamour-of-the-ancient-padmavati-159|title= Pawaya – Glamour of the Ancient Padmavati|last= Saxena|first= Saurabh|access-date= 5 October 2018|quote= A door lintel from Pawaya in Gujari Mahal Museum|archive-date= 6 February 2022|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20220206231640/https://puratattva.in/2011/07/11/pawaya-glamour-of-the-ancient-padmavati-159|url-status= dead}}{{cite web |url= https://www.exoticindiaart.com/article/sari/?signout=1|title= Sari: Indian Woman's Globally Venerated Distinction |author= |date= January 2009|quote=4th–5th century, Pawaya, now in Gwalior museum }} [https://www.exoticindiaart.com/artimages/Pawaya_the_dancing_figure.jpg Clear closeup of door lintel] Southern India too has early images of lutes, including 2nd-3rd century AD artwork at the Amaravati Stupa, where a large bodied, short-necked lute is carved into the relief sculpture. Another South India artwork showing a lute is found in the 450-490 AD painting, Padmapani Bodhisattva in the Ajanta Caves.

Much of short lute development happened in the Central Asian area between India, China and Persia. Early short lutes were carved out of a single block of wood (monoxle), not built up in a box or bowl-like modern lutes. An example is the barbat which has been called ancestral to both skin-topped instruments like the gambus as well as to larger wood-topped instruments such as the oud. Names were reused or used across multiple instruments over the millennia; the rabab group is an example of that. The family included short lute-shaped instruments, to larger lutes with multiple chambers (some covered with wood, some with skin), to long-necked lutes that retained the multiple sound chambers and skin over the bowl. Some rababs were plucked, some bowed.

File:Lute, 20th dynasty.jpg|alt=Lute, 20th dynasty|Statuette of a lute found in Egypt, attributed to the 20th dynasty (1189–1077 BC). No short lute tradition remained there by the 1st century AD.

File:Gandhara lute, 2nd-4th century A.D.jpg|Musician playing for a dance, Gandhara, 2nd-4th century AD.

File:Clevelandart 1980.15.jpg|Pakistan. Lute in Gandhara, probably Butkara in Swat, Kushan period (1st century-320)

File:Gandhara Lute, Pakistan, Swat Valley, Gandhara region, 4th-5th century.jpg|Pakistan. Gandhara lute, Swat Valley, 4th-5th century.

File:Lute in Life scenes of Buddha-2nd century CE, Amravati.jpg|India. Lute in life scenes of Buddha-2nd century AD, Amaravati Stupa, Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh. This lute may have been developed into the veena.

File:Indian chordophone 2nd-1st century B.C., Chandraketugarh.jpg|India, Chandraketugarh, 2nd-1st century BC Veena or possibly tanbura or sitar.

:See: History of Central Asia

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=center

|header= Central Asian music in China

| align = left

| image1 = MusiciansOnCamelimShaanxi History MuseumgR+M.jpg

| width1 = 171

| alt1 = Musicians on Camel, Shaanxi History Museum, Xi'an

| caption1 = Tang dynasty art. Musicians on a camel, including one playing the lute. A similar artwork shows a group of bearded foreign musicians together on camelback.{{cite web |url= https://new.qq.com/omn/20171228/20171228A0WPSP.html|title= 陕西34件顶级国宝 仅一件就值半个香港 [Only one of the top 34 national treasures in Shaanxi is worth half a Hong Kong]|author= |date= 28 December 2017 |access-date= 4 October 2018|quote= }} [https://inews.gtimg.com/newsapp_match/0/2587445120/0 Photo of another statuette of camel with musician-riders, bearded foreigers (Sogdian), one with a lute.] Tang dynasty (618–907 AD) Excavated from a Tang dynasty tomb, Zhongbu village, western suburb of Xi'an City. Kept at Shaanxi History Museum, Xi'an

| image2 = Sogdian whirl with large pipa.jpg

| width2 = 180

| alt2 = dancer with lute dancing Sogdian Whirl

| caption2 = Buddhist painting from the Mogao Caves, 762–827 AD. A dancer spins while the orchestra plays. Three kinds of lutes are present: large pipa with dancer, smaller pipa on far right side lower. Above that is a long-necked sanxian or possibly tanbur-relation. Dancer with lifted leg, a posture that may have been the Sogdian Whirl; it has been recreated in China today, called Pipa dance 反弹琵琶 (Fǎntán pípá).

|image3=F190B SC UT.jpg

|width3=152

|alt3=Sogdian Whirl on photo by Ulrich von Schroeder

|caption3= Dancer in the Sogian Whirl posture, lute held behind his head, 8th-century AD wine jug from Tadzhikistan, "in Sogdian style with Sasanian influence", at the Jokhang temple, Tibet, PRC.{{cite book |title=Buddhist Sculptures in Tibet, Vol. Two: Tibet and China |pages=792–795, pls. 190A–D |publisher=Visual Dharma Publications |year=2001 |author=Ulrich von Schroeder}}

|image4=Pipa on Camel.jpg

|width4=150

|alt4=Engraving from the oldest pipa

|caption4=Engraving from Tang dynasty era pipa, gift from the Chinese emperor to the Japanese emperor. Along with the oldest known pipa, the Japanese court also preserved a version of the Central Asian dances from Kucha into the modern era.

|footer= Central Asian traders bridged Byzantium and the Middle East with China and India, with their caravan's of traders. The Sogdians (their main city was Samarkland) were especially famous as traders. Because of them, the Chinese Emperor could drink wine from Roman glasses with his wife and do the "Sogdian Whirl".{{cite web |url= http://www.tangdynastytimes.com/2009/01/kuchean-dancers-and-the-sogdian-whirl.html|title= Kuchean Dancers and the Sogdian Whirl |last=Peony [pseudonym] |website= tangdynastytimes.com|access-date= 15 October 2018|quote=Sogdian Whirl ...took the Tang capital by storm. Not only the emperor, but his favorite concubine, the infamous Yang Guifei-- along with her 'favorite,' the 400 pound Sogdian-Turk An Lushan could perform this exotic dance, snacking on Lychees from Canton and sipping grape wine out of Roman cut glass goblets ... Persian melodies, played on Persian lutes and harps, Indian dances and music and those from the Northern steppes and Korea. ... the music and dance of Kucha.}} In 384 AD, the Chinese conquered Kucha, which was famous for its music and dance. It is in the area of the Kizil Caves, whose paintings make it clear that a variety of lutes were being invented and played in the region. The Kuchean dances were popular in the Chinese court, and are still preserved today in the Japanese imperial court, where a trader with lute can be seen on the 5-string-pipa from Central Asia, a gift of one emperor to another.

}}

It has been argued that Central Asia, a crossroads of multiple civilizations, the Middle East, Europe, China and India, could itself constitute a center of world civilization.{{cite book |last=Starr |first= S. Frecerick|date= 2013|title= Lost Enlightenment, Central Asia's Golden Age From The Arab Conquest to Tamerlane |location= Princeton, New Jersey|publisher=Princeton University Press |page=34 |isbn=978-0-691-15773-3 |postscript= ... the Amu Darya (Oxus River) valley in Central Asia constitutes a fourth point of origin of urban civilization, along with the Nile, Indus and Tigris-Euphrates valleys ... contacts with all three of these centers of world civilization.}} It was described by the Greek geographer, Strabo, as "a land of 1000 cities".{{cite book |last=Starr |first= S. Frecerick|date= 2013|title= Lost Enlightenment, Central Asia's Golden Age From The Arab Conquest to Tamerlane |location= Princeton, New Jersey|publisher=Princeton University Press |page=28 |isbn=978-0-691-15773-3}} The peoples there could be loosely called Iranians, the historic tribes, not only citizens of the modern country. Over a period of centuries Central Asia was conquered by people from different cultures including the Greeks, Kushans, various Turkic tribes, Persians (themselves an Iranian tribe), Arabs and Mongols. The result was a blending of the cultures, and Central Asia grew prosperous in spite of the invasions.

When the Arabs conquered Central Asia, they were conquering a culture that specialized in taking things, evaluating them for their potential value and improving on them. Their habit of evaluating applied to products to sell and to ideas.{{cite book |last=Starr |first= S. Frecerick|date= 2013|title= Lost Enlightenment, Central Asia's Golden Age From The Arab Conquest to Tamerlane |location= Princeton, New Jersey|publisher=Princeton University Press |pages=45, 48, 61, 96 |isbn=978-0-691-15773-3 |postscript= in city after city, specialized industries arose to serve the export trade ... studied foreign products passing through ... identified those they could produce better or cheaper ... placed a premium on open-mindedness and innovation ... Central Asians were constantly confronted with new way of doing things and new ideas ... they became adept at finding what was useful ... they learned how to adapt rather than adopt what they learned from abroad}}{{cite book |last=Starr |first= S. Frecerick|date= 2013|title= Lost Enlightenment, Central Asia's Golden Age From The Arab Conquest to Tamerlane |location= Princeton, New Jersey|publisher=Princeton University Press |page=96 |isbn=978-0-691-15773-3 |postscript= ... became skilled at comparison shopping identifying the distinctive elements of each [religion] and also the common denominators among them ... the inquiry that formal philosophy calls epistemology ... it is not surprising that during the later Age of Enlightenment, Central Asians like Farabi led the world in this field and in the classical logic as well.}} Central Asia was pluralistic and diverse and had some of the biggest cities on the planet, with books being "numerous and widespread", and a high rate of literacy, in which even women could read and write.{{cite book |last=Starr |first= S. Frecerick|date= 2013|title= Lost Enlightenment, Central Asia's Golden Age From The Arab Conquest to Tamerlane |location= Princeton, New Jersey |publisher=Princeton University Press |pages=62–63, 70, 99–100 |isbn=978-0-691-15773-3}} The culture of literacy and evaluation continued after the Arabs burned the Central Asian libraries (an attempt to do away with competing ideas).{{cite book|last= Starr |first= S. Frederick |title= Lost Enlightment: Central Asia's Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane |publisher= Princeton University Press |pages= 108–111|place= Princeton, New Jersey |date= 2013 |isbn= 978-0-691-15773-3 |quote= All these tactics were means to the end of wiping out local religions and spreading the faith of Muhammed...of more lasting consequence was Quatayba's systematic destruction of books and religious literature...works on astronomy, history, mathematics, genealogy, and literature...Writing in the 11th century, the great scientist Biruni rued this destruction as a crime against an ancient culture.}}

Arabic became a lingua-franca, joining Central Asia with the wider Muslim academic world.{{cite book|last= Starr |first= S. Frederick |title= Lost Enlightment: Central Asia's Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane |publisher= Princeton University Press |place= Princeton, New Jersey |date= 2013 |page=16 |isbn= 978-0-691-15773-3 |quote= It is true that most, but not all, of Central Asia's thinkers in this era wrote in Arabic. Indeed, the adoption of Arabic as a single lingua franca for intellectual interchange throughout the Islamic world was of huge importance to the creation of an international marketplace of ideas...}}

Having access to Greek philosophy, including Plato and Aristotle long before the European Renaissance, Central Asian polymaths debated the Greek ideas and engaged in science and philosophy.{{cite book|last= Starr |first= S. Frederick |title= Lost Enlightment: Central Asia's Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane |publisher= Princeton University Press |place= Princeton, New Jersey |date= 2013 |pages=258–265 |isbn= 978-0-691-15773-3 |quote= an exchange of letters...Abu Rayhan al-Biruni...Ibn Sina...the letters...attest to the vitality of intellectual life in Bukhara and Central Asia during the last days of Samanid rule...blunt questions on Aristotle...defended the Greek thinker's [Aristotle's] view that... }} They created climate of intellectual development which helped to bring about the European Renaissance.{{cite book|last= Starr |first= S. Frederick |title= Lost Enlightment: Central Asia's Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane |publisher= Princeton University Press |place= Princeton, New Jersey |date= 2013 |pages=1–20 |isbn= 978-0-691-15773-3 |quote=...this was an age of polymaths, of individual thinkers who accumulated truly encyclopedic bodies of knowledge and then went on to make original contribution to as many as six or more different fields...German scholar Adam Mez declared that the humanism of the European Renaissance would have been impossible without this earlier explosion of philosophical inquiry in Central Asia...}}

Among the products manufactured and exported to China were "lutes, harps, transverse flutes, both plucked and bowed stringed instruments, and even Central Asian dances."{{cite book |last=Starr |first= S. Frecerick|date= 2013 |title= Lost Enlightenment, Central Asia's Golden Age From The Arab Conquest to Tamerlane |location= Princeton, New Jersey|publisher=Princeton University Press |page=46 |isbn=978-0-691-15773-3}}{{cite web |url= http://www.tangdynastytimes.com/2009/01/kuchean-dancers-and-the-sogdian-whirl.html|title= Kuchean Dancers and the Sogdian Whirl |last=Peony [pseudonym] |website= tangdynastytimes.com|access-date= 15 October 2018|quote=[quoting Susan Whitfield's 'Life Along the Silk Road'] 'Music, song and dance,' says Whitfield, 'were Silk Road commodities, bought and sold like silver and jade. Itinerant dance troops from India, Burma, Cambodia and Sogdiana performed at both the royal court and the public marketplace in every silk road town.'}}

One of the peoples, the Sogdians were successful merchants for centuries and traveled to Europe, China and India.{{cite book |last=Starr |first= S. Frecerick|date= 2013|title= Lost Enlightenment, Central Asia's Golden Age From The Arab Conquest to Tamerlane |location= Princeton, New Jersey|publisher=Princeton University Press |page=45 |isbn=978-0-691-15773-3 |postscript= ... four centuries before the Arab invasion, it was the Sogdian merchants from Samarkand, Panjikent and the neighboring towns who stood at the head of European commerce ... along the routes to China ... all the main routes to India ... across the Black Sea to Constantinople, and from Basra in Iraq across Indian Ocean to Sri Lanka and Canton.}} They took their music and dances with them, and the Sogdian Whirl, became popular in China. Another group from Central Asia was the people of Kucha, whose music and dances were popular in the Imperial Court, and which have survived in the Japanese Imperial Court into the modern era.

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=center

|header=Early pipas

| align = right

| image1 = Yanju's tomb, lute player.jpg

| width1 = 140

| alt1 = Lute in China, 384–441 AD

| caption1 = Early depiction of pear-shaped lute or pipa in China from Dingjiazha Tomb No. 5, at end of Sixteen Kingdoms and beginning of Northern Wei dynasty eras (384–441 AD){{cite magazine|last= Zhu|first= Fengsh|date= September 2014|title= 墓主燕居行乐图探考 (translation: Exploring Yanjuxing's Tomb)|url= https://www.xzbu.com/2/view-6215201.htm|magazine= 活力杂志 [Translation: Vitality Magazine]|location= 黑龙江 [Heilongjiang]|publisher= 黑龙江日报报业集团 [Heilongjiang Daily Newspaper Group]|access-date= 24 September 2018|quote= [Information about the magazine article this ran in is at www.xueshu.com/hl/201410/3683520.html]|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20180924174803/https://www.xzbu.com/2/view-6215201.htm|archive-date= 24 September 2018|url-status= dead}}

| image3 = Kizil 16, Asparas.jpg

| width3 = 124

| alt3 = Apsara flying with 5-string pipa, Kizil Cave 8, 6th century

| caption3 = 5-string pipa, 6th century, from the Kizil Caves, cave 8

| image2 = Pipa player - Yulin Cave 25.jpg

| width2 = 149

| alt2 = Tang dynasty pipa, Yulin cave 25

| caption2= 5-string pipa, Tang dynasty period (618–907 AD), south wall of Yulin cave 25. The painting appears to depict the instrument with frets.

|image4 = Pipa from Yulin caves, cave 10, Western Xia period 1028-1227.jpg

|width4=150

|alt4=Pipa, Yulin caves 1028–1227 AD

|caption4=Pipa from Yulin caves, cave 10, Western Xia period 1028–1227.

}}

The pear-shaped pipa is likely to have been introduced to China from Central Asia, Gandhara, and/or India.[http://www.danwei.com/the-pipa-how-a-barbarian-lute-became-a-national-symbol/ The pipa: How a barbarian lute became a national symbol] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110613213913/http://www.danwei.com/the-pipa-how-a-barbarian-lute-became-a-national-symbol/ |date=2011-06-13}} Pear-shaped lutes have been depicted in Kusana sculptures from the 1st century AD.{{cite journal |last1=Picken |first1=Laurence |title=The Origin of the Short Lute |journal=The Galpin Society Journal |date=March 1955 |volume=8 |pages=32–42 |doi=10.2307/842155|jstor=842155}}{{cite web |url= http://www.clevelandart.org/art/1980.15|title= Bracket with two musicians 100s, Pakistan, Gandhara, probably Butkara in Swat, Kushan Period (1st century-320)|publisher= The Cleveland Museum of Art|access-date=March 25, 2015}}

The pear-shaped pipa may have been introduced during the Han dynasty and was referred to as Han pipa. However, depictions of the pear-shaped pipas in China only appeared after the Han dynasty during the Jin dynasty in the late 4th to early 5th century.{{cite book |title=Six Dynasties Civilization |author=Albert E. Dien |pages=342–348 |publisher=Yale University Press |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-300-07404-8}}

A small pipa was found in murals of tombs in Liaoning (遼寧) province in northeastern China. The date of these tombs is about late Eastern Han (東漢) or Wei (魏) period (220–265 AD). However, the pear-shaped pipa was not brought to China from Dunhuang (敦煌, now in northwestern China) until the Northern Wei period (386–524 AD) when ancient China traded with the western countries through the Silk Road (絲綢之路). Evidence was shown on the Dunhuang Caves frescoes that the frescoes contain a large number of pipa, and they date to the 4th to 5th centuries.Shen, Sin-Yan (1991). Chinese Music and Orchestration: A Primer on Principles and Practice, p. 109. Chinese Music Society of North America, Woodridge. October 19, 2009.

The pipa acquired a number of Chinese symbolisms during the Han dynasty – the instrument length of three feet five inches represents the three realms (heaven, earth, and man) and the five elements, while the four strings represent the four seasons.{{Cite book|

title=Fengsu Tongyi

| author= Ying Shao

| author-link= Ying Shao

| year = c. 195

}} [https://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=en&id=285068 Original text]: 批把: 謹按： 此近世樂家所作，不知誰也。以手批把，因以為名。長三尺五寸，法天地人與五行，四弦象四時。

Translation: Pipa, made by recent musicians, but maker unknown. Played "pi" and "pa" with the hand, it was thus named. Length of three feet six inches represents the Heaven, Earth, and Man, and the five elements, and the four strings represent the four seasons. (Note that this length of three feet five inches is equivalent to today's length of approximately two feet and seven inches or 0.8 meter.)

Depictions of the pear-shaped pipas appeared in abundance from the Northern and Southern dynasties (420 to 589) onwards, and pipas from this time to the Tang dynasty were given various names, such as Hu pipa (胡琵琶), bent-neck pipa (曲項琵琶, quxiang pipa), some of these terms, however, may refer to the same pipa. Apart from the four-stringed pipa, other pear-shaped instruments introduced include the five-stringed, straight-necked, wuxian pipa (五弦琵琶, also known as Kuchean pipa (龜茲琵琶)),{{cite book |last=Myers |first=John E. |date=1992 |title=The Way of the Pipa: Structure and Imagery in Chinese Lute Music |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=avjpd2zHZSgC&pg=PA8 |publisher= Kent State University Press |page=8 |isbn= 978-0-87338-455-1}} a six-stringed version, as well as the two-stringed hulei (忽雷). From the 3rd century onwards, through the Sui and Tang dynasty, the pear-shaped pipas became increasingly popular in China. By the Song dynasty the word pipa was used to refer exclusively to the four-stringed pear-shaped instrument.

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=center

|header=Early moon lutes

| align = right

| image1 = Apsara-mit-Sitar.jpg

| width1 = 150

| alt1 = Chinese lute 385–534 AD

| caption1 = Apsara with sitar or yueqin, found at Luoyang; Longmen Caves. Northern Wei period (385–534 AD)

| image2 = Rong Qiqi and Ruan Xian.JPG

| width2 = 158

| alt2 = Chinese lute 385–534 AD

| caption2= Xishan, Nanjing, tomb of the Eastern Jin dynasty, second half of the 5th century. Artwork: "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove and Rong Qiqi", shows Rong Qiqi (left) and Ruan Xian (playing a ruan or yueqin).

|image3=Moon Lute from Western Wei Dynasty 535-557, 285th Cave of Mogao Caves.jpg

|width3=147

|alt3= Yueqin moon lute, from the Western Wei dynasty 535–557

|caption3= A lute resembling a yueqin moon lute, from the Western Wei dynasty 535–557, 285th Cave of Mogao Caves. Lutes like this have some resemblance to Southeast Asian moon lutes such as the chapey and the đàn nguyệt. Appears to have frets.

|image4 = Mogao caves, cave 220, Tang Dynasty 618-907.jpg

|width4= 150

|alt4= moon lute or qinqin from Mogao caves, cave 220, Tang dynasty 618–907

|caption4= 5-string lute from Mogao caves, cave 220, Tang dynasty 618–907. Body shape resembles qinqin or đàn sến, but different numbers of strings.

Seems to have frets.

|footer=The moon lutes have become widespread. Versions of them can be found throughout China as the ruan family and also as the yueqin family. Moon lutes have spread south of the border where, in Southeast Asia, they have their own versions. The Southern China version of the yueqin, which may be related to the Southeast Asian moon lutes, has a longer neck than the northern version. The long-necked yueqin is being revived in Taiwan.{{cite news |last=Gao |first= Pat|date=1 March 2015 |title= Taiwan Review: Moon Guitar Revival |url= https://taiwantoday.tw/news.php?unit=20&post=26480|work= Taiwan Today|publisher= Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of China (Taiwan)|location= Taiwan |access-date=1 October 2018 |quote=the guitar-like yueqin ... has been falling out of use due to the rise in popularity of the guitar, piano and various Western orchestral instruments. ... Yueqin is a broad term used to describe a number of related instruments that originated in mainland China. The Taiwanese version, which has two strings and a long guitar-like neck, grew out of the merging of several such instruments. ... }}
[https://taiwantoday.tw/site/Tr/public/MMO/TR%20Images/201503p14.jpg Example of Taiwan yueqin]

}}

Another type of lute in China is the yueqin, a round-bodied instrument with flat top and back. According to tradition, the instrument was invented in China during the 3rd to 5th centuries AD Jin dynasty.{{cite web|title=yueqin|url=http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/654624/yueqin|publisher=Encyclopædia Britannica|access-date=26 January 2012}} The ruan, another Chinese instrument, is the ancestor of the yueqin. The period overlaps with the period of immigration of ancient non-Han Chinese peoples and invasions, by groups such as the Five Barbarians.

The yueqin is a type of ruan, what may be China's oldest lute. Ruans may have a history of over 2,000 years, the earliest form may be the qin pipa (秦琵琶), which was then developed into ruanxian (named after Ruan Xian, 阮咸), shortened to ruan (阮).[1][2] In old Chinese texts from the Han to the Tang dynasty, the term pipa was used as a generic term for a number plucked chordophones, including ruan, therefore does not necessarily mean the same as the modern usage of pipa which refers only to the pear-shaped instrument. According to the Pipa Annals 《琵琶赋》 by Fu Xuan (傅玄) of the Western Jin dynasty, the pipa was designed after revision of other Chinese plucked string instruments of the day such as the Chinese zither, zheng (筝) and zhu (筑), or konghou (箜篌), the Chinese harp.[3] However, it is believed that ruan may have been descended from an instrument called xiantao (弦鼗) which was constructed by labourers on the Great Wall of China during the late Qin dynasty (hence the name Qin pipa) using strings stretched over a pellet drum.[4]

The antecedent of ruan in the Qin dynasty (221 BC – 206 BC), i.e. the Qin pipa, had a long, straight neck with a round sound box in contrast to the pear-shape of pipa of later dynasties. The name of "pipa" is associated with "tantiao" (彈挑), a right hand technique of playing a plucked string instrument. "Pi" (琵), which means "tan" (彈), is the downward movement of plucking the string. "Pa" (琶), which means "tiao" (挑), is the upward movement of plucking the string.[5]

The present name of the Qin pipa, which is "ruan", was not given until the Tang dynasty (8th century). During the reign of Empress Wu Zetian (武則天) (about 684–704 AD), a copper instrument that looked like the Qin pipa was discovered in an ancient tomb in Sichuan (四川).{{Cite book

| title= Tongdian | year=801

| author= Du You |author-link= Du You

| chapter= 144: 樂典四 權量 八音 樂懸

| quote= 阮咸，亦秦琵琶也，而項長過於今制，列十有三柱。武太后時，蜀人蒯朗於古墓中得之，晉竹林七賢圖阮咸所彈與此類同，因謂之阮咸。

}}

Translation: Ruan Xian, also called Qin pipa, although its neck was longer than today's instrument. It has 13 frets. During Empress Wu period, Kuailang from Sichuan found one in an ancient tomb. Ruan Xian of The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove from the Jin dynasty was pictured playing this same kind of instrument, it was therefore named after Ruan Xian. It had 13 frets and a round sound box. It was believed that it was the instrument which the Eastern Jin (東晉) musician Ruan Xian (阮咸) loved to play.Shen, Sin-Yan (1991). Chinese Music and Orchestration: A Primer on Principles and Practice, p. 108. Chinese Music Society of North America, Woodridge. October 19, 2009.

Although the ruan was never as popular as the pipa, the ruan was divided into several smaller, better-known instruments within recent centuries, such as yueqin ("moon" lute, 月琴) and qinqin (Qin [dynasty] lute, 秦琴) . The short-necked yueqin, with no sound holes, is now used primarily as accompaniment for Beijing opera . The long-necked qinqin is a member of both Cantonese (廣東) and Chaozhou (潮州) ensembles.Thrasher, Alan R. (2002). Chinese Musical Instrument, p.40. Oxford University Press Inc., New York. {{ISBN|0-19-590777-9}}. October 18, 2009.

File:Cave of the Statues, back room mural.jpg|Kizil Cave 77, Cave of the Statues, back room, back wall, fresco over reclining Parinirvana Buddha.

File:Kizil 118.jpg|Kizil Cave 118, circa 395-465

Musical instruments came into China from Central Asia, such as the pipa, or may have been invented locally such as the Qin-Pipa or sanxian. China became a source of instruments for (or shares instruments in common with) other cultures, including Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Three ways to categorized these are:

• short-necked pipas (such as the pipa, liuqin, bipa, and Tỳ bà)
• short and long-necked moon lutes (such as the yueqin, ruan, gekkin, đàn tứ, đàn đáy, zhongruan, qinqin, đàn sến, đàn nguyệt)
• long-necked lutes (such as the sanxian, tianqin, shamisen, đàn tam, and đàn tính).

File:China (2482258684) (2).jpg|China, pipa, 2008.

File:Biwa (1).jpg|Japan, biwa

File:Liuqin.jpg|China, liuqin, smaller than pipa

File:Bipa (Korean musical instrument).jpg|Korea, bipa

File:Tỳ bà.jpg|Vietnam, đàn tỳ bà

File:Lai-Afong, Female Musicians and Singers of Foo-Chow.jpg|China, (left to right) sanxian, pipa, two huqin type fiddles, c. 1907, Fuzhou.

File:MUSICIANS 2.jpg|China, huqin type fiddle (left) and a yueqin (moon lute) or ruan, c. 1874.

File:Woman Playing a Moon Zither.jpg|Japan, gekkin, 1886.

File:Đàn tứ.jpg|Vietnam, đàn tứ, tứ meaning "four" for 4 strings. Also called đàn đoản (đoản meaning "short", referring to the instrument's neck). Related to Chinese yueqin, although 4 individual strings makes it closer to the ruan.

File:Blind girl sing for a living in Jiufeng.jpg|China, southern yueqin or possibly a zhongruan (中阮, lit. "medium ruan"), 1960. Southern yueqins had long necks, unlike the northern. This instrument lacks the large soundholes that are a trait of the ruan. These are being revived in Taiwan.

File:Dan Nguyet (Vietnamese moon lute).jpg|Vietnam, đàn nguyệt literally means "moon string-instrument" (đàn is the generic term for "string instrument" and nguyệt means "moon"). Image taken in Australia, 2017

File:Cambodian musician playing Chapey, 1880.jpg|Cambodia, Chapei dong veng (ចាប៉ីដងវែង) and Thailand grajabpi (กระจับปี่), c. 1880. Origin uncertain: China (ruan or yueqin), Islamic (rubab or tanbir), India ("chapei derives from the Sanskrit kacchap(î)" turtle shell, used for sound bowl).{{cite web|url= https://www.soundsofangkor.org/english/khmer-instruments/lute-chapei-va/|title= Lute – chapei dang veng|author= Kersalé Patrick|website= soundsofangkor.org/|access-date= 23 September 2018|archive-date= 23 September 2018|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20180923171051/https://www.soundsofangkor.org/english/khmer-instruments/lute-chapei-va/|url-status= dead}}

File:Man playing a đàn đáy.jpg|Vietnam đàn đáy. Possibly related to Chapei dong veng as both are heptatonic. Also shares characteristic with some Indonesian and Malaysian boat lutes: has an open back.

File:Qinqinplayer.jpg|China, qinqin (秦琴) or plum blossom qin (梅花琴)

File:Đàn Sến.jpg|Vietnam, đàn sến. Vietnamese version of qinqin

File:Flickr - dalbera - Huong Thanh Trio, (musée Guimet, Paris) (4).jpg|Vietnam đàn nguyệt or đàn sến

File:Chinese orchestra 1 5499690323 c0495e85e5 o.jpg|Larger ruans in an orchestra

File:Dalian Liaoning China Ruan-Player-in-Dalian-Labour-Park-01.jpg|China, ruan-family instrument, either a bass daruan (大阮) or contrabass diyinruan (低音阮)

File:Tapete-Sanxian.JPG|China, sanxian, 1780.

File:ShamisenBuskerPittStreetSydney.JPG|Japanese style shamisen, 2006 played by a man in Australia. Related to sanxian

File:Dan tam (three-stringed lute) - Vietnam Museum of Ethnology - Hanoi, Vietnam - DSC02536.JPG|Đàn tam, tam means three (for three strings). Related to sanxian.

File:Thai tinh tau.png|Vietnam, đàn tính, or tianqin (天琴). Gourd lute. A musical instrument of Zhuang people came to some ethnic groups in Northern mountainous region in Vietnam

File:Vatch music teacher 02.jpg|Thailand sueng

File:Pinaŭo.jpg|Thailand and Laos, phin

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=

|header = 8th–13th centuries AD

| align = right

|image1=Syrian lute 8th century.jpg

|width1= 150

|alt1= Syrian lute c. 730 AD

|caption1= Syrian lute c. 730 AD

| image2 = Lute-family instrumentalist at Capella Palatina 2.jpg

| width2= 127

| alt2 = Oud or lute-family instrument at the Capella Palatina

| caption2= Sicily, c. 1140 AD

| image3 =Lute-family instrumentalist at Capella Palatina.jpg

| width3= 137

| alt3 = Oud or lute-family instrument at the Capella Palatina

| caption3 =Sicily, c. 1140 AD

|image4=Maler der Geschichte von Bayâd und Riyâd cropped.jpg

|width4=137

|alt4=13th-century oud from Bayâd und Riyâd

|caption4= Lute from Al-Andalus copied manuscript, History of Bayâd and Riyâd. Copy from 13th century AD. Vatican Apostolic Library (MS Ar. 368)

|footer=(Left) oud found in Syria, has two features common to Tang dynasty pipa, the extra tip at the end of the peghead and the shape of the soundhole. (Center-two images) Oud-family instruments painted in the Cappella Palatina in Sicily, 12th century. Roger II of Sicily employed Muslim musicians in his court, and paintings show them playing a mixture of lute-like instruments, strung with 3, 4 and five courses of strings. (Right) 13th-century AD image of an oud, from a 13th-century copy of Bayâd and Riyâd, a larger instrument than those in images at the Cappella Palatina.

}}

Bactria and Gandhara became part of the Sasanian Empire (224–651), the last empire of the Persians. Under the Sasanians, a short almond shaped lute from Bactria came to be called the barbat or barbud, which was developed into the later Islamic world's oud or ud.{{cite web|url=http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/barbat |title=Encyclopaedia Iranica – Barbat |publisher=Iranicaonline.org |date=1988-12-15 |access-date=2012-02-04}} The lute was brought from Al-Hira in Persia to Mecca by Nadr ibn al-Harith, probably prior to 602 AD and was adopted by the Quraish, a mercantile Arab tribe.{{cite journal |last1= Farmer|first1= Henry George |date= October 1930 |title= The Origin of the Arabian Lute and Rebec |journal= The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland|issue=4 |pages= 769–771|jstor= 44012873}} He taught the instrument and the song (ghina, Arabic: غِنَاء) that accompanied it to his people, where the instrument and song "were adopted by singing girls". Early musicians to use the lute include the Persian{{EI2|last=Wright|first=O.|title=Ṣāʾib K̲h̲āt̲h̲ir|volume=8 |url=https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/saib-khathir-SIM_6481?s.num=184&s.rows=20&s.f.s2_parent=s.f.book.encyclopaedia-of-islam-2&s.start=180&s.q=Persian |page=852}} Sa'ib Khathir (died 683 AD), who brought the lute to Medina and Ibn Suraij in Mecca, said to have been the first to sing Arab songs on a lute "built in the Persian style" in 684 AD.{{cite book |last= Lu'lu'a |first= 'Abdulwāħid |date=2013 |title=Arabic-Andalusian Poetry and the Rise of the European Love-Lyric |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=QSARAgAAQBAJ&q=S%C4%81%27ib+Kh%C4%81thir&pg=PA35 |location= Houston, Texas|publisher= Strategic Book Publishing |page= 34 |isbn= 978-1-62516-401-8 |quote=we read in al-Aghānī that Sā'ib Khāthir was the first person that brought the lute to Madīna after Islām.}}

When the Umayyads conquered Hispania in 711 and created Andalusia, they brought their ud or quitra along, into a country that had already known a lute tradition under the Romans, the pandura.

During the 8th and 9th centuries, many musicians and artists from across the Islamic world flocked to Iberia.{{Citation |title=The Literature of Al-Andalus |editor1=María Rosa Menocal |editor2=Raymond P. Scheindlin |editor3=Michael Anthony Sells |publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2000}} Among them was Abu l-Hasan 'Ali Ibn Nafi' (789–857),{{cite book|last=Gill|first=John|title=Andalucia: A Cultural History|year=2008|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-537610-4|page=81|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gGY2fSXko5kC&pg=PA81}}{{cite book|last=Lapidus|first=Ira M.|title=A History of Islamic Societies |year=2002|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn= 978-0-521-77933-3|page=311|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I3mVUEzm8xMC&pg=PA311}} a prominent musician who had trained under Ishaq al-Mawsili (d. 850) in Baghdad and was exiled to Andalusia before 833 AD. He taught and has been credited with adding a fifth string to his oud and with establishing one of the first schools of music in Córdoba.{{Citation|title=Fixing a Misbegotten Biography: Ziryab in the Mediterranean World|author=Davila, Carl|publisher=Al-Masaq: Islam in the Medieval Mediterranean Vol. 21 No. 2|year=2009}}

By the 11th century, Muslim sections of Spain, or Al-Andalus, had become a center for the manufacture of instruments. These goods spread gradually to Provence, influencing French troubadours and trouvères and eventually reaching the rest of Europe. While Europe developed the lute, the oud remained a central part of Arab music, and broader Ottoman music as well, undergoing a range of transformations.{{Cite web|url=https://oudmigrations.com/2016/03/08/journeys-of-ottoman-ouds/|title=The journeys of Ottoman ouds|date=2016-03-08|website=oudmigrations|access-date=2016-04-26}}

Beside the introduction of the lute to Spain by the Moors, another important point of transfer of the lute from Arabian to European culture was Sicily, where it was brought either by Byzantine or later by Muslim musicians.{{Cite book|last1=Lawson|first1=Colin|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TdmaBAAAQBAJ&dq=history%2520of%2520the%2520lute%2C%2520%2522roger%2520II%2522&pg=PT460|title=The Cambridge History of Musical Performance|last2=Stowell|first2=Robin|date=2012-02-16|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-316-18442-4|language=en}} There were singer-lutenists at the court in Palermo following the Norman conquest of the island from the Muslims, and the lute is depicted extensively in the ceiling paintings in the Palermo's royal Cappella Palatina, dedicated by the Norman King Roger II of Sicily in 1140. Sicilian influence increased as Tuscan poets visited Sicily in the 13th century to partake of the local culture. His Hohenstaufen grandson Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor (1194–1250) continued integrating Muslims into his court, including Moorish musicians.{{Cite book|last=Boase|first=Roger|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IRC8AAAAIAAJ&dq=roger%2520ii%2C%2520court%2520musicians&pg=PA70|title=The Origin and Meaning of Courtly Love: A Critical Study of European Scholarship|date=1977|publisher=Manchester University Press|isbn=978-0-7190-0656-2|language=en}} By the 14th century, lutes had disseminated throughout Italy and, probably because of the cultural influence of the Hohenstaufen kings and emperor, based in Palermo, the lute had also made significant inroads into the German-speaking lands.

Although the major entry of the short lute was in western Europe, leading to a variety of lute styles, the short lute entered Europe in the East as well; as early as the 6th century, the Bulgars brought the short-necked variety of the instrument called Komuz to the Balkans.

Additionally, the Byzantine Empire bordered on both Europe and Persia. The Central Asian lute, now middle Eastern, can be seen in Byzantine artwork from the 9th and 10th centuries.{{cite web |url= http://www.vanedwards.co.uk/history1.htm |title= An Illustrated History of the Lute Part One|last=Van Edwards |first= David |website=vanedwards.co.uk |quote=[image caption:] Byzantine ivory carving (9th–10th century) part of four panels. Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt No. Kg. SU. 215}}

File:Shahrud.jpg|Ottoman Empire,1582. Shahrud, illustrated in the Surname-i Hümayun

File:Oud, V & A London, ivory casket, Spain, 11th c.jpg|Oud, Spain, circa 1000-1025, Al-Andalus

File:Egitto, cairo, placca decorativa in avorio, XI sec - Louvre - OA6266.jpg|Oud, 11th century, Egypt.

File:Arqueta de Leyre (Museo de Navarra) cropped.jpg|Circa 1004-1005 A.D., Caliphate of Cordoba. Oud player and two other musicians carved into the Arqueta de Leyre (Museo de Navarra)

Instruments from approximately the 12th and 13th centuries in Spain and Sicily, areas conquered by Muslims and then European Christians. Instrument identities are educated guesses, even by experts, as none of these were labeled and historical descriptions of different types are vague. Places where cultures interact are fertile sources of new ideas, where experimentation creates new instruments, the same process that blends different types of music to create new music by fusion. A similar process happened in Central Asia, over centuries of repeated trade by different cultures and conquests by different tribes.

Even after the Muslims were conquered in Spain or driven out, the process of experimentation continued, leading to a number of European instruments, including the guitar. A similar process occurred in Italy. Both Spain and Italy experimented with the viol or vihuela which led to bowed viols, violas vielles, and guitars. Other experiments led to the citole and cittern or Portuguese guitar, the gittern and vandola (mandore, mandola) which also led to the guitar, but also to the mandolin family. Spanish instruments that survived in Spanish colonies include the tiple.

Portuguese experiments led to the Portuguese guitar, and other instruments seen today in places that Portuguese ships landed, including the cavaquinho and ukulele.

File:European and Islamic musicians in 13th century playing stringed instruments.jpg|Al Andalus, Cantigas de Santa Maria, Musicians playing lute-family instruments. These have been called guitarra latina, guitarra morisca and tambura

File:Guitar latina morisca.jpg|Al Andalus, Cantigas de Santa Maria, European musicians playing lute family instruments, possibly (left) citoles or guitarra latina and (right) guitarra morisca

File:Vihuela de arco en las Cantigas de Alfonso X el Sabio.jpg|Al Andalus, Cantigas de Santa Maria, European musicians playing viola de arco

Two European lutes with oud soundholes.jpg|Al Andalus, Cantigas de Santa Maria, Europeans holding lutes with W sound holes (a Muslim instrument feature) and the drilled dots (found on the Gambus and on Eastern European lutes into the early 20th century AD.

File:Capellapalatinamusician.jpg|Palermo, Sicily, c. 1140 AD, oud from the Capella Palatina.

File:Cantigas Santa Maria.jpg|Al Andalus, Cantigas de Santa Maria, European musicians playing (left) viola de arco and (right) citoles or plucked fiddles or guitarra latina

File:Cantigas de Santa María, Codex of the musicians, B-I-2 162R lute rebab.jpg|Al Andalus, Cantigas de Santa Maria, large instrument has been called barbat, oud and lute. Smaller instrument is a type of rubab or rebab.

File:Cantiga rabé morisco.jpg|Al Andalus, Cantigas de Santa Maria, Andalusian or Magreb rebab

File:Cantigas de Santa Maria (fragment).jpg|Al Andalus, Cantigas de Santa Maria, Right Image:Vielle or viola de arco and citole or guitarra latina. Left image Vielle

File:Spanische Musikanten - Miniatur 13. Jh. Escorial.jpg|Al Andalus, Cantigas de Santa Maria, unknown fiddles

File:Vihuela de arco y vihuela de péñola en las Cantigas.jpg|Al Andalus, Cantigas de Santa Maria, fiddle and plucked fiddle.

File:Vielles and Citole, Manuscript T (El Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T. I. 1), fol. 5r, detail.jpg|two vielles and a citole

File:Cappella Palatina-ceiling-ISL15015.jpg|Sicily, c. 1140 AD. Lute family instrument or rubab. Not clear whether wood or leather top; both rubab and lute style soundholes.

File:Guitarra morisca (Chitarrino Arabo).jpg|Sicily, 12th century image from the Cefalù Cathedral. Skin topped lute, possibly guitarra morisca or rubab

File:Moorish women playing chess, European woman playing lute.jpg|León and Galicia, c. 1283. European image of Muslim Spain, showing a European woman, playing lute or oud for Moorish women.

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=center

|header=Double-chambered lutes: India, Central Asia, China, Mongolia

|width=100px

| align = right

| image1 = Man playing Lyre from Yusufzai Gandhara.jpg

| alt1 = Ancient rubab Kushan Empire

| caption1 = Kushan lute, 1st to 3rd century AD. Found in Yusufzai district near Peshawar, Pakistan. In related instruments, the round section is a skin soundboard.

| image5 = Barbed rubab (lute), 1660-1670 CE, Golkonda.png

| alt5 = A gittern and a rebec

| caption5 = Music in Golkonda, 1660–1670. Musician plays a form of rubab known in India today as the seni rabab.{{cite web | title = Seni Rabab | author = David Courtney | url = https://chandrakantha.com/articles/indian_music/seni.html | access-date = 2021-04-18 | archive-date = 2018-04-30 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20180430113828/https://chandrakantha.com/articles/indian_music/seni.html | url-status = dead }} A similar bowed version still exists today, the Kamaica.

|image3 = Mongolian lute, circa 1279-1368, Tomb of Wang Qing.jpg

|alt3 = Painting of rubab found in Mongolian grave in China

|caption3 = Mongolian lute, c. 1297, Tomb of Wang Qing, China. Probable shidurghū or sugudu. Possibly version of sanxian.

| image4 = 13th century rubab from ceramic plate, Rayy ( Iran ) ca 1200 CE.jpg

| alt4 = Iranian rubab image on ceramic plate

| caption4 = Iranian style rubab from the 13th century AD, found in Rayy (near Tehran, Iran).

|image2 = Mogao Cave 322, Double chambered lute.jpg

|alt2 = Chinese double-chambered lute, Mogao cave 322

|caption2 = Chinese double-chambered lute, Mogao Cave 322, Early Tang dynasty (618–704 AD) Possible lutes include the huobosi and a calabash-back huluqin 葫蘆琴.

|footer =Surviving related instruments include the medieval Iranian rubab, the rubab of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Northern India, the Indian sarod, sursingar and kamaica, the Nepali tungana, the Bangladeshi, Bengali and Assamese dotara, the Tibetan and Bhutanese dramyen or zhamunian, the Pamiri rubab, the Uyghur rawap.

In China the huobosi ({{lang|zh|火不思}}), also called the hubo (胡撥), and the sugudu ({{lang|zh|苏古笃}}), both with 4 strings are still played by the Naxi people. Historical variants known from writing include the shidurghū or sanxian (3 strings classically, modern 4 strings), qūpūz-e rumī (5 double strings), qūpūz-e ozan (3 single strings), and rūdkhānī."{{cite book |series= Cambridge Elements, The Global Middle Ages| title= Eurasian Musical Journeys, Five Tales |chapter= 5 Tracking the Qopuz: From Qocho to Herat |author1= Gabriela Currie |author2= Lars Christensen | year= 2022 |pages= 53–56 | doi= 10.1017/9781108913805 | isbn= 9781108913805 | s2cid= 248169243 |url= https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/eurasian-musical-journeys/E4DC6E746EDCE8773A8EF80262A35DF0 |quote= ...the qopuz historically belongs to a larger family of instruments known from textual sources of West and Inner Asia, which are all leather-bellied, plucked lutes that include the shidurghū, rubāb, qūpūz-e rumī, qūpūz-e ozan, and rūdkhānī...the shidurghū, the classical form of the modern Mongolian shudraga/shidurgu, a three-stringed, long-necked lute with a skin-covered sound-chest,...the shidurghū of [ca. 1435]... Four strings are mounted on this instrument. [The sound-chest of this lute] is long, and half of its surface is covered with skin...}}

The family of instruments blended Persian and Indian cultures, and has been played by Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and Zoastrians. The instruments share a common name, because the vowel sounds are not always indicated in Arabic script. Plucked and bowed versions have shared the name.

}}

In areas around the Himalayas, variations of the rubab developed, part of Indo-Persian culture. From India, north through Pakistan, Nepal, into Persian/Turk areas of Central Asia, a group of barbed lutes and double-chested, skin-topped lutes developed. Today these include both plucked and bowed instruments, the sarod, rubab, sarinda, rebab, tungana.

The instruments had a connection to the steppes horse cultures, that conquered from China to Europe in waves of invaders. Images have been found from Mongolian peoples in northern China, to the Turkic and Persian peoples in Northern India, Central Asia and Iran. Like the barbat and oud, these instruments went both east and west. They can be found in Nepal, Tibet, Southeast Asia and China. The instruments also traveled through Arabia (and on boats from there to Southeast Asia), across Northern Africa to the Iberian peninsula.

It has been suggested that the sanxian, a form of spike lute, may have its origin in the Middle East, and older forms of spike lute were also found in ancient Egypt. Similar instruments may have been present in China as early as the Qin dynasty as qin pipa (pipa was used as a generic term in ancient China for many other forms of plucked chordophones) or xiantao (弦鼗).{{cite web |url=http://www.easonmusicschool.com/chinese-orchestra-instruments/chinese-plucked-string-instruments/sanxian/ |title=Sanxian |work=EasonMusic}} Some thought that the instrument may have been re-introduced into China together with other instruments such as huqin by the Mongols during the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368),{{cite book |first=John E. |last=Myers |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=avjpd2zHZSgC&pg=PA7 |title=The way of the pipa: structure and imagery in Chinese lute music |publisher=Kent State University Press |year=1992 |isbn=978-0-87338-455-1 |pages=5–7}}{{cite book |author =楊慎 (Yang Shen) |title= 《昇庵外集》 (Outer Collection of Sheng'an) |quote= 「今次三弦，始於元時」(The Sanxian originated in the Yuan dynasty}} however, an image of a sanxian-like instrument was found in a stone sculpture dating from the Southern Song period (1217–79). The first record of the name "sanxian" may be found in a Ming dynasty text.{{cite encyclopedia |url=https://www.britannica.com/art/sanxian |title=Sanxian |encyclopedia=Encyclopaedia Britannica}}

The instrument was transmitted to other East Asian countries, for example to Japan as shamisen.{{cite book|last=Leiter|first=Samuel L.|title=Encyclopedia of Asian Theatre: A-N|year=2007 |publisher=Greenwood Press|isbn=978-0-313-33530-3|page=445|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JttNAAAAYAAJ}}{{cite book|title=Kodansha encyclopedia of Japan, Volume 7|year=1983 |isbn=978-0-87011-627-8 |page=77|publisher=Kodansha |url=https://books.google.com/books?ei=Ud06Tp_8LY3oOamT3dUD}}

File:SanXian.JPG|A sanxian

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=center

|header=Rababs or rebabs in Europe, c. 1260

| align = right

| image1 = Rabel.jpg

| width1 = 132

| alt1 = Rabâb player in Southern Spain, from the Cantigas de Santa Maria.

| caption1 = Rebab player. Soundboard is cut in half. Sachs said of another example that this was probably wood and skin.

| image2 = Gitterns in the Cantigas de Santa-Maria, Codex of musicians page 104R.jpg

| width2 = 132

| alt2 = A gittern and a rebec

| caption2 = Three-string rebabs with wooden soundboards. These have also been called gitterns an instrument ancestral to the guitar and according to Sachs the mandore/mandola.

| image3 = Rebabs from the Cantigas de Santa Maria.jpg

| width3 = 165

| alt3 = two rebabs

| caption3 = Rebabs of the same style that Sachs labels rabâb, now called Maghreb rebabs.{{cite book |last=Sachs |first=Curt |date=1940 |title= The History of Musical Instruments |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach|url-access=registration |location= New York |publisher= W. W. Norton & Company |pages= [https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach/page/245 245]|isbn=978-0-393-02068-7}} Wood and skin soundboards. Examples were still being made in Morocco in 1991.

| footer = Sachs said these instruments entered Europe through Spain. He felt that they were the likely candidate for the Moorish guitar, "with shrill and harsh notes", and ultimately related to the mandore or mandola. The Cantigas de Santa Maria, c. 1260, captured some of the musical instruments introduced from Muslim dominated Andalusia to Southern Europe. The plucked and bowed versions existed alongside each other.{{cite book |last=Sachs |first=Curt |date=1940 |title= The History of Musical Instruments |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach|url-access=registration |location= New York |publisher= W. W. Norton & Company |pages= [https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach/page/251 251–253]|isbn=978-0-393-02068-7}} The bowed instruments became the rebec and the plucked instruments became the gittern. Curt Sachs linked this instrument with the mandola, the kopuz and the gambus, and named the bowed version rabâb. When the Muslims were driven out of Spain, Andalusian music and instruments survived in North Africa, in the Maghreb.

}}

In The History of Musical Instruments, Sachs talked about a second kind of short lute found in the "Islamic Near East", carved from a single piece of wood, no distinct neck and a pegbox that was sickle shaped. There was also a kind with "an inferior stringholder".

The instruments that would become the gambus with sickle shaped pegbox traveled east "as far as the Celebes in Southeast Asia and southwards to Madagascar off the east coast of Africa". Another scholar thinks they traveled across the Indian ocean as well on Yemeni ships, as the Yemeni quanbus The gambus is among the last of the family of skin-topped lutes. Sachs names the instruments gambus, kabosa and qūpūz.

The gambus is plucked, but many of the variants are bowed. By the time the instrument became bowed, it was named rabâb, a name that has been used for long-necked skin topped instruments as well. The Cantigas de Santa Maria in Southern Spain had examples of both bowed and unbowed instruments.

The early instruments traveled west to enter Europe through Andalusia and Eastern Europe where they gained wooden tops and became lyras. In Yemen, the instrument was known as the quanbus. It traveled to Southeast Asia with Yemeni sailors. Over time, some of these became intertwined with spike fiddles. Variations of these instruments can be found in China, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and Europe.

Variations include the rebabs that spread via Islamic trading routes over much of North Africa, the Middle East, parts of Europe, and the Far East.{{Cite web |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/the-origins-of-the-violin-the-rebab/6785.html |title=BBC – Learning Zone Class Clips – the origins of the violin – the rebab – Music Video |access-date=2019-12-21 |archive-date=2013-12-30 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20131230182734/http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/the-origins-of-the-violin-the-rebab/6785.html |url-status=dead }} The Medieval European Rebec, Croatian Lijerica, Cretan Cretan lyra, Bulgarian Gadulka and Russian Gudok, the Gusle used in Serbia, Romania, Albania and Bulgaria, the Eastern Mediterranean Kemenche and Persian Kamancheh, the Kazakh Kobyz, Bangladeshi Ektara are variations.

These can blur the line between long-necked instruments and short necked. The soundbox is, in some cases, so long that it effectively adds to the instrument's scale-length, like a long neck.

File:Qanbuz.JPG|Yemen or Indonesia. Gambus or qanbūs

File:Syrian qanbus nyc met.jpg|Syria, 1899. Qanbūs.

File:'By @ibneAzhar'-BaltitFort-Hunza-GB-Pakistan- (99).JPG|Pakistan. Rubab with upper sound chamber expose

File:Robab.jpg|Iran. Robab, upper sound chamber covered with wood, top has frets

File:Ustad Ghulam Hussein.JPG|Afghanistan. Rubab, top has frets

File:Aashish Khan.jpg|India. Sarod, has no frets

File:Nereus Playing Lute, 1st-3rd Cent. AD.jpg|1st-3rd century A.D. Nereus or possibly Triton playing a double chamber lute.

File:Rabab ca. 1885 Indian (north), Metropolitan Museum of Art.jpg|India (Northern). Rabab c. 1885, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Was called rudra veena when collected.

File:Sursanga 19th century by Ali Akbar Khan, Metropolitan Museum of Art.png|Sursingar or sursanga, 19th century by Ali Akbar Khan. Metropolitan Museum of Art

File:Rahmat Khan.jpg|Sursingar player

File:Indian village musicians.jpg|Tambura; this one is very similar in shape to the bowed Kamaica and Seni rebab

File:Un iranien joue au Tar.JPG|Iran. Tar, double sound chambers with a skin top

File:Iranian or Persian youth playing tar or rubab.jpg|Iran, rubab or tar, (possibly showing wooden upper top, skin lower top), c. late 16th century AD

File:Sgra-Snyan,14th–16th century,Tibetan.jpg|Sgra-Snyan, 14th–16th centuries, Tibetan. Two sound chambers

File:RubabPamiri9strings.jpg|Pamiri rubab, longer necked type of rubab, sound holes up neck show it is hollow

File:Luth dranyen (musée d'ethnographie, Neuchâtel, Suisse) (28873179047).jpg|Bhutan. Dranyen.

File:Muhammad Jaffar 1590.jpg|Iranian style rubab c. 1590, longer neck, painted by Muhammad Jaffar

File:Rubab late 12th or early 13th century AD.jpg|Iranian or Persian rubab, late-12th to early 13th century AD, Iran

File:Bangladesh dotara.JPG|Bangladesh, Bengal, and Assam. Dotara

File:Prakash Gandharva playing the arbajo आरबाजो.png|Nepal, arbajo

File:Nepalese instrument.jpg|Nepali tungana

File:Dranyen.png|Dramyin or dranyen, 2005, Tibet

File:Musical instruments Rubabs and Dutars in Tajikistan.JPG|Bottom Tajik rubab (or rawap), middle tar, top dutar. The sound chamber on the rawap does not extend beyond the round bowl.

File:Sarinda1.gif|India, sarinda. Double chambered like Afghan rubab.

File:Anchor Shaped Sarinda.jpg|Eastern India. Tribal fiddle instruments called "Dhodro Banam" used by Santal people.

File:Nepali sarangi.jpg|Nepal. Nepali sarangi

File:Sakar Khan-Amarrass-Artist.jpg|India. Kamsica, close relative to the plucked Seni rebab and sursingar

File:The Childrens Museum of Indianapolis - Sarangi.jpg|India, sarangi

File:National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka - Rabab Andalusiyyah - Morocco - Made around 1991.jpg|Morocco, 1991. Maghreb rebab or Rabab Andalusiyyah (Andalusian Rabab), brought to North Africa from The Iberian Peninsula after Reconquista

File:Rabab saharaoui.jpg|rabâb saharaoui, 1879

File:Joseph Scherer - Blind lyra-player - 1844.jpg|kemenche, 1844

File:Liraris.jpg|kemenche, Greece, late 19th or early 20th century

File:Cappella Palatina-ceiling-Female musician.jpg|Rebab, Sicily, c. 1140 AD. Painting from the Cappella Palatina. Same sound holes found on Al Andalusia lutes

File:Russ instr gudok.gif|gudok, Russia

File:Lira calabrese.JPG|Calabrian lira

File:Azerbaijani player in chaganeh.jpg|Azerbaijan, 3010. Chagane

File:Uyghur satar or sataer (ساتار).jpg|Uyghur man playing Satar, Xinjiang, China

File:Pastimes of Central Asians. Musicians. A Man Practicing the Kamancha, a Long-necked Stringed Instrument WDL10824.png|kamancha, a Long-necked Stringed Instrument, c. 1865–1872, Turkestan

File:Man with folklor.jpg|kamancheh, 2016, Egypt

File:2 Kamānches, Persia, ca. 1880.jpg|kamancheh, c. 1880s, Iran

File:Kokyu LACMA M.80.219.60.jpg|kokyū, Japan, 19th century

File:Mongolian Musician.jpg|morin khuur, Mongolia 2005

File:20170309 090540 Ravanahatha player Jaisalmer anagoria.jpg|ravanahatha, 2017, India

File:Família d'instruments huqin.jpg|huqin-family instruments, China

File:Vatch music teacher 01.jpg|Thailand, coconut shell saw u ซออู้, the lowest pitch instrument in its family, which also includes the hardwood or ivory saw duang (ซอด้วง) and three-stringed Saw sam sai (ซอสามสาย).

File:Khmer instruments 04.jpg|Cambodia, Tro (ទ្រ). This family of instruments includes coconut-shell tro u (ទ្រអ៊ូ), small hardwood tro sau toch (ទ្រសោតូច), bigger hardwood tro sau thom (ទ្រសោធំ), and the tro che. Also a three-stringed tro Khmer (ទ្រខ្មែរ).

File:Emile gsell cambodian woman.jpg|Cambodia, c. 1880, tro Khmer (ទ្រខ្មែរ)

File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Een rebabspeler TMnr 60052115.jpg|Indonesia, Rebab. Some of the Indonesian rebabs have the same shaped-coconut that the Cambodian and Thai instruments use. Others have ordinary round coconuts.

File:Haegeum player.jpg|Korea, haegeum 2 strings

File:DPRK-Sohaegeum.jpg|North Korea, sohaegeum, 4 strings

{{multiple image

| align = right

| image1 = Indian chordophone 2nd-1st century B.C., Chandraketugarh.jpg

| width1 = 118

| caption1 = Indian short-necked lute 2nd-1st century B.C., Shunga period, Chandraketugarh. The original sculpture appears to have 3 strings.

|image2 = Indian lute, Shunga period, 2nd century B.C.jpg

| width2 = 77

| caption2 = Indian long-necked lute, Bengal, Shunga period, 2nd century B.C.

|image3 = Lute or veena player, India, Mathura, Kushan Period (1st century-320).jpg

|width3 = 120

|caption3 = Lute or veena player, northern India, (Mathura during Kushan Period), 1st century A.D.

|image4=Pawaya-lintel lute.jpg

|width4= 120

|caption4= Lute from the Pawaya, 4th-5th century AD{{cite web |url=https://www.soundsofangkor.org/english/ancient-music/lute/ |title=The lute of Pawaya (India)|author=Patrick Kersalé}}

}}

Among modern lutes in India are the sitar, tanpura and Saraswati veena.

The sitar is currently believed to have developed from tanburs during Muslim rule in the north, after 1192 AD{{Cite book |last=Miner |first=Allyn |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4nPHTCS8vfUC&dq=sitar+Khusrau+khan&pg=PA21 |title=Sitar and Sarod in the 18th and 19th Centuries |date=April 2004 |publisher=Motilal Banarsidass Publ. |isbn=978-81-208-1493-6 |language=en}}{{cite encyclopedia |encyclopedia=The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments |publisher=MacMillan Press Limited |place=London |date=1984 |editor=Stanley Sadie |pages=392–400 |isbn=0-943818-05-2 |entry=Setār |author1=Alastair Dick}} The Saraswati veena was developed in about 1600-1634 during the reign of Raghunatha Nayak.{{Cite web|title=Vīṇā|url=https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/display/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-90000347354|access-date=2023-02-04|website=Grove Music Online|year=2019 |language=en|doi=10.1093/omo/9781561592630.013.90000347354|last1=Dick |first1=Alastair |last2=Widdess |first2=Richard |last3=Bruguière |first3=Philippe |last4=Geekie |first4=Gordon |isbn=9781561592630 }} It was developed from the "barbed rabab" of the Moghul courts, with the tuning, frets, upper resonator, string and running coming from the native stick-zither instruments such as the kinnari vina.

However, this is not to say India was unfamiliar with lutes earlier in its history. Images of Indian lutes exist, both short necked and long necked instruments as far back as the Shunga Empire in the 2nd century B.C.

In the north of India a lute from the first century AD may be seen in a Mathuran sculpture.{{cite web |title= Corner Railing Pillar with Drinking Scenes, Yakshis, and Musicians |date= 31 October 2018 |url= https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1977.34 }}|website= The Cleveland Museum of Art |access-date= 25 November 2022 |quote= AD 100s In the 1st–4th centuries AD., lutes traveled with Buddhists in Northern India along the Silk Road and can be seen in sculptures in Gandhara, where Buddhism mixed with Hellenism.

In the south of India, images at the Ajanta Caves (450–490 A.D.) and Pawaya (4th–5th century A.D.) also show the instruments in years approaching the medieval period. Sculptures by Buddhist and Hindu cultures at Champa (Cham culture), Ku Bua, Thailand (Dvaravati culture), and Borobudur, show Indian cultural influence and images of lutes dating to the 7th through the 9th century A.D.

:See: Ancient maritime history See: Veena

Southeast Asia consists of countries connected to the continent, such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Laos, as well as island nations such as Indonesia and Malaysia and New Guinea. During the first millennium AD, Southeast Asia has had connections to India, Africa, China, Melanesia and the Arab Peninsula. Musical instruments can be grouped by geographic location, ethnicity or religion; all of these have had an effect on what instruments are used in a community.

Speaking of Southeast Asia, Curt Sachs said its history began "in the first centuries A.D. when it became an immense, though loosely knit, Indian colony. Hinduism and Buddhism spread throughout what are now Burma, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, all the way to China."{{cite book |last=Sachs |first=Curt |date=1940 |title=The History of Musical Instruments |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |pages= 235–236 |quote= the pear-shaped short lutes ... resemble not only the lutes represented on the Indian art works about 500 A.D., but also the Sino-Japanese lutes of the biwa family.}}

Austronesians navigated an area from Easter Island to Madagascar, setting up the Maritime Silk Road though Southeast Asia. The Austronesians, who included the Javanese and Sumatrans, passed on the catamaran and outrigger boat to South India and Sri Lanka about 1000-600 BC and reached China c. 220-200 BC.{{cite book |last1=Bellwood |first1=Peter |last2=Fox |first2=James J. |last3=Tryon |first3=Darrell |title=The Austronesians: Historical and Comparative Perspectives |date=2006 |publisher=Australian National University Press |isbn=978-1-920942-85-4 |url=https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/series/comparative-austronesian-series/austronesians}}{{cite book|last1=Bellwood|first1=Peter|title=The Global Prehistory of Human Migration|date=2014|page=213}}{{cite book|first1=Bérénice|last1= Bellina|editor1-first=John|editor1-last=Guy|title =Lost Kingdoms of Early Southeast Asia: Hindu-Buddhist Sculpture 5th to 8th Century|chapter =Southeast Asia and the Early Maritime Silk Road|publisher =Yale University Press|year =2014|pages=22–25|isbn =978-1-58839-524-5|chapter-url =https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263007720}}

The waterways became international as ships from the Islands sailed all the way to India and Madagascar, and Indian ships sailed the other direction. Southeast Asia formed ties to India as early as the 4th century BC.{{cite journal |journal= Ancient Asia |title= Seafaring archaeology of the East Coast of India and Southeast Asia during the Early Historical Period |author= Sila Tripati|year= 2017 |volume= 8 |doi= 10.5334/aa.118 |quote= The findings of agate and carnelian beads from the excavations of Ban Don Ta Phet [Thailand] indicate the earliest maritime contacts between India and Southeast Asia datable to 4th century B.C. ... maritime contact between India and Southeast Asia is dateable to the 4th century B.C. on the basis of radiocarbon dates|doi-access= free}} About a millennium later, Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms were formed in Southeast Asia. These included Champa (192–1832 AD), the Khmer Empire (802–1431 AD), Dvaravati (6th-11th century AD), and the Shailendra dynasty (8th-11th century AD, ruling the Mataram Kingdom and Srivijaya).

These cultures produced carved stone reliefs, which reveal musical instruments used in the cultures, including lutes. Lutes been seen in artwork at ruins in Thailand's Ku Bua (c. 650-700 AD), Vietnam's Mỹ Sơn (c. 850s AD), and Malaysia's Borobudur (9th century). The smaller oval bodied lutes resemble lutes from India in the Gupta period in the 4th and 5th centuries AD, and also the biwa family.{{cite web |author= Patrick Kersalé |title= Lute |date= 22 February 2021 |website= Sounds of Angkor |url= https://www.soundsofangkor.org/english/old-instruments/lute/ |access-date= 3 March 2021 |archive-date= 26 January 2021 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20210126045656/https://www.soundsofangkor.org/english/old-instruments/lute/ |url-status= dead }}

File:Kinnara with kachchapa veena, part of the Bodhisattva Padmapani, Cave 1, Ajanta, India.jpg|India, in Ajanta Caves, Cave 1, c. 450-490 AD. Kinnara with "kacchapī veena" (Sanskrit for "tortise veena") or panchangi veena (5-stringed veena). Part of the painting Bodhisattva Padmapani.{{cite web|author= Subramanian Swaminathan|title= Paintings|website= saigan.com|url= https://www.saigan.com/heritage/painting/ajanta/ajanta15.html|quote= Kinnara playing Kachchapa Vina, Padmapani Panel, Cave 1}}{{cite news|title= Yazh to panchangi veenai: Forgotten musical instruments now on display at Egmore Museum|website= Newsminute.com|url= https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/yazh-panchangi-veenai-forgotten-musical-instruments-now-display-egmore-museum-76202|quote= Or that there's a representation of the Panchangi veenai (5-stringed veena) in Ajanta caves dating back to 480-600 AD?}}The use of kacchapī veena is not settled and remains a name that researchers place onto examples of early veenas as a possibility. There is a difference of opinion between the published works of many western scholars (especially later 19th-century and early 20th-century scholars) and modern Indian scholars. Both colonialism and nationalism can have a role in people's beliefs about the research.

File:Large-5d6e38b2567c4.jpg|Hindu. 650-700 AD, Thailand, Ku Bua, (Dvaravati culture). Three musicians in right are playing (from center) a 5-stringed lute, cymbals, a tube zither or bar zither with gourd resonator.

File:Cham lute, from the Mỹ Sơn pedestal E1 in the Museum of Cham Sculpture, Da Nang, Vietnam.jpg|Hindu. 8th century AD, Champa. Cham lute, from the Mỹ Sơn pedestal E1 in the Museum of Cham Sculpture, Da Nang, Vietnam.

File:Borobudur lute and harp, 9th century CE.jpg|Hindu, Buddhist. 9th century AD, Borobudur (Shailendra dynasty). 3-stringed lute and harp. In this time, the Chinese pipa was still being played horizontally. Lute player may be using plectrum.

File:Borobudur lute, stick zither and flute, 1880 photo.jpg|Hindu, Buddhist. 9th century AD, Borobudur (Shailendra dynasty). 3-stringed lute (second from left). It is a small part of a larger image illustrating the Lalitavistara Sūtra, Bodhisattva in Tusita Heaven.

File:Gandavyuha - Level 3 Balustrade, Borobudur - 115 West Wall (8601288269).jpg|Hindu, Buddhist. 9th century AD, Borobudur, Level 3, 115 West Wall

File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Reliëf op de Borobudur TMnr 10015651.jpg|Hindu, Buddhist. 9th century AD, Borobudur, from the now buried "hidden base" section of the monument. Stick zither (left) and a lute.

File:Borobudur 9th century lutenist.jpg|Hindu, Buddhist. 9th century AD, Borobudur (second gallery, main wall). Girl in a dance position playing a lute.

File:Brodobudur lute with frets, from second gallery, main wall.jpg|Hindu, Buddhist. Brodobudur, second gallery, main wall. Lute with frets

File:Lute from Borobudur, the buried "hidden base" section, cropped from photo by Kassian Céphas, 1890-1891.jpg|Hindu, Buddhist. Borobudur (buried section), 1890–1891. Lute resembling modern sapeh.

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=center

| align = right

| image1 = Kaamulan Festival 2016 - 26167600132 cropped.jpg

| width1 = 130

| alt1 = Kudyapi being played

| caption1 = Lumad musicians playing kudyapi (right) and tube zither during the 2016 Kaamulan Festival of Bukidnon.

| image2 = Small Island Big Song 39.jpg

| width2 = 130

| alt2 = Sapeh being played

| caption2 =Sapeh being played at Rudolstadt-Festival 2019. The musicians come from different islands of the Pacifik and Indian Ocean.

|image3 = COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM De bekende mandolinespeler Si Datas van Soerbakti Karolanden Noord-Sumatra TMnr 10005387.jpg

|width3= 90

|alt3= Kulcapi player Si Datas

|caption3= Si Datas on kulcapi, Karo Regency, 1914–1919.

}}

Modern boat lutes in the island regions of Southeast Asia include the Sapeh from Borneo, the Sumatran Hasapi and Philippine Kutiyapi. The history of these has not been fully documented, but musicologists look to India for origins. Hans Brandeis, a researching musicologist working with the Philippine Kutiyapi lutes, considers the instrument could have traveled to the Philippines by way of Myanmar, Cambodia and Thailand. He pointed out similarities between the alligator zithers of those countries, such as the Chakhe or Mi gyaung and the boat lutes, including the way they are strung with a melody and drone string, movable frets and a plectrum tied to a finger to play. Another feature in common is the way the alligator zithers and boat lutes are made, carved out of a log from the back, leaving a wooden soundboard intact in the front.{{cite web |title= The Boat Lutes of the Philippines |author=Hans Brandeis |url= https://www.academia.edu/attachments/61673884/download_file?st=MTYxNTMxMjc0NiwxODQuMTY0LjEyNS4yMDksNDkxMzY3MQ%3D%3D&s |date=January 2020}}

File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Luit met twee snaren TMnr 2082-10.jpg|Pre-1951, Sumba, Indonesia. A jungga boat lute.

File:Junga, from Sumba.jpg|Sumba. A junga, showing influence of Portuguese instruments on lute-making culture, now a guitar-family instrument.

File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Langhalsluit met twee snaren TMnr 1802-5.jpg|1948, Borneo. Boat lute (not named when collected).

File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Langhalsluit met twee snaren TMnr 2241-10.jpg|Pre-1953, Toba Batak people. Riman boat lute. Appears to be carved from top with separate soundboard.

File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Korthalsluit met twee snaren TMnr 1579-1.jpg|Pre-1942, Southern Sulawesi. Ketjapi.

File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Langhalsluit met twee snaren TMnr 1384-1.jpg|Pre-1940, Kenyah people, Indonesia. Ketjapi.

File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Langhalsluit met twee snaren TMnr 5053-18.jpg|Pre-1986, Toba Batak people. Hasapi.

File:Lute (kutyapi), Mindanao, wood, Honolulu Museum of Art.jpg|Maguindanao, Philippines. Kutiyapi decorated with ukkil motifs.

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=center

| align = right

| image1 = Musician playing gambus Hadhramaut at the Zubir Abdullah's Cinta, Cipta & Citarasa workshop concert in Malaysia- 8 Aug 2010.jpg

| width1 = 207

| alt1 = gambus resembling oud

| caption1 = 2010, Malaysia. Musician playing wood-topped gambus modeled on oud.

| image2 = A boy playing the gambus.jpg

| width2 = 130

| alt2 = boy playing gambus

| caption2 =Boy playing a gambus, a local name for the quanbus-like instrument.}}

After the fall of Borobudur, Indian influence declined. The arrival of Muslim traders and communities would add further influences to the region's music as Muslim communities were established throughout the region. Immigrants from Yemen brought with them the qanbūs a skin-topped lute.

The instruments were "transmitted" from the Muslim world to the Malay at an undermined time. Links to the Middle East begin as early as the 5th or 6th centuries AD, with trading networks and occupation in the 15th century. Experts have tentatively given dates for the instruments' arrival between the 9th and 15th centuries AD. In looking for origins, musicologists have also noted some similarities with the Chinese pipa.{{cite journal |title= The Structure and Development of the Gambus (Malay-Lutes) |author= Larry Francis Hilarian |journal= The Galpin Society Journal |volume=58 |date= May 2005 |pages= 66–216 |jstor= 25163827 |url= https://www.jstor.org/stable/25163827}}{{cite book |author= Hilarian, L. F. |date= 2003 |chapter= The gambus (lutes) of the Malay world |editor= J. S. Buenconsejo |title= A search in Asia for a new theory of music: A symposium organised by the Philippines Center for Ethnomusicology as the 7th International Conference of the Asia Pacific Societyfor Ethn omusicology (APSE) |pages= 455–480 |place= Quezon City, Philippines |publisher= UP Center for Ethomusicology. |quote= The gambus may have developed over the centuries in alam Melayu, however, the striking resemblance to qanbus or barbat, supports the theoty that it was an "imported" instrument rather than being indigenous to alam Melayu albeit now modified and adapted ... the gambus Hadhramaut was a later arrival to alam Melayu as the 'ud only arrived in Yemen in the 19th century.}}

Following a new wave of immigrants from Yemen in the 18th century, the term gambus began being applied to an instrument resembling the oud with a wood soundboard, instead of the skin soundboard of the other gambus and the qanbus.

Africa today retains the largest variety of skin-topped pierced lutes, in which the neck is a stick that penetrates the body of the instrument. In some, the neck pokes out the bottom and strings are attached there. Others have the neck end within the instrument's body, edge of the neck's end poking up through the skin, securing the strings. These are not merely instruments brought in from outside and copied across generations, but include instruments that originate from local designs. Ultimately the banjo was one of these.

File:Gnaouas d'Oran (Algérie) avec leur geumbri.JPG|Oran, Algeria, early 20th century. The geumbri is also an instrument of Morocco, used in Gnawa ceremonies.

File:Chef de Toumanéa (Guinée).jpg|Haute Guinea, 1905. Instrument is about the same size as the kontigi, a one-string lute used by Muslims in West Africa.

File:Hausa harpist.jpg|Niger and northern Nigeria. Hausa musician playing a gurmi.

File:Garaya.jpg|Niger and northern Nigeria. Fulani musician playing a gourd bodied garaya. The Hausa also make the instrument, with a wood body.{{cite book |title= Banjo Roots and Branches |editor= Robert B. Winnans |chapter= 3 List of West African Plucked Spike Lutes |author1-last=Pestcoe |author1-first= Shlomo |author2-first=Greg C. |author2-last= Adams |pages= 47–48 |quote= Semi-Spike Lutes...
garaya [plural garayu] (Hausa: Nigeria) (two strings)...
garaya [garayaaru, garayaaji] (Fulani [Fulbe]:Cameroon) (two strings; gourd body)}}{{cite book |last=Gourlay |first=K. A. |url=https://archive.org/details/grovedictionaryo0002unse_h8z7/ |title=The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments |date=1984 |publisher=MacMillan Press |editor=Sadie Stanley |volume=2 |place=London |page=25 |article=Garaya}}

File:A Ghanaian musician playing kolog instrument.jpg|Ghana, 2023. Musician playing a kolog.

File:Atongo Zimba is a Ghanaian musician.jpg|Atongo Zimba, Ghana, playing a kologo.

Goje players from Northen Nigeria.jpg|Northern Nigeria, 2008. Hausa musicians playing bass lutes (probably babbar garaya or komo{{cite book |title= Banjo Roots and Branches |editor= Robert B. Winnans |chapter= 3 List of West African Plucked Spike Lutes |author1-last=Pestcoe |author1-first= Shlomo |author2-first=Greg C. |author2-last= Adams |page= 49 |quote= Semi-Spike Lutes...komo [babbar garaya (literally "big garaya")] (Hausa: Nigeria) (two strings; gourd body)}}) and one playing the goge bowed lute. The Gbagyi call the instrument kaburu.{{cite book |title= Banjo Roots and Branches |editor= Robert B. Winnans |chapter= 3 List of West African Plucked Spike Lutes |author1-last=Pestcoe |author1-first= Shlomo |author2-first=Greg C. |author2-last= Adams |page= 48 |quote= Semi-Spike Lutes...kaburu (Gwari [Gbari, Gbagyi]: Nigeria) (three strings)}}

The yenna and his Gombri 2.jpg|Tunisia, 2017. Musician playing large-bodied gombri.

File:Lute with turtle-shell body, Democratic Republican of the Congo.jpg|Lute with turtle-shell body, Democratic Republican of the Congo

File:Lute with turtle-shell body, Democratic Republican of the Congo, back.jpg|Lute with turtle-shell body, back, Democratic Republican of the Congo

Horizonte 2013 0297 04.JPG|Madagascar, 2013. Musician playing a kabosy.

File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Langhalsluit met drie snaren TMnr 4728-1.jpg|Morocco, pre-1981, skin-topped lute, carved wooden bowl, Amazigh, Amazighen, Berber cultures. Called "Lothar". Labeled "Gimbrī" in Koptishe Lauten (Ricardo Eichmann, 1994, page 101)

File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Langhalsluit met 4 snaren TMnr A-11007.jpg|West Africa, pre-1887, skin-topped lute, calabash bowl, has sound holes

File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Langhalsluit met 4 snaren TMnr 3925-153.jpg|Mali, pre-1970, skin-topped lute, carved wooden bowl, Fellani, Foulah, Ful, Fulani, Fulbe, Peul, Toucouleur cultures, called "Hoddu"

File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Langhalsluit met 2 snaren TMnr 2212-5.jpg|Africa, pre-1953, skin-topped lute, carved wooden bowl

File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Langhalsluit met 4 snaren TMnr 4185-1.jpg|Ramkie. Rhodesia-Zambia, skin topped lute or banjo, metal can for body, Kaonde culture

File:Joueur d'ekonting à Bagaya.jpg|Senegal, akonting. Possibly related to banjo.

File:Akonting cmdt.jpg|Gambia, akonting with pegs

File:Taj Mahal MQ2007-j.jpg|United States. Banjo in the hands of Taj Mahal.

File:Imzad (bowd spike lute, 20th century, Tuareg people, Ahaggar Region, Algeria) - MIM PHX (2022-04-06 02.20.56 by Terry Ballard).jpg|Algeria. Tuareg people. Imzad bowed lute.

File:Azmari in a tejbeit.jpg|Lalibela, Ethiopia, 2005. An azmari (minstrel) plays a manenqo, bowed lute.

File:Playing Zeze, a Musical Instrument.jpg| Tanzania, 2016. A line of musicians play the zeze, bowed with a stick.

File:Endingidio.png|Uganda, 2017. Endingidi bowed lute.

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=center|total_width=410

| align = right

| image1 = Nicholas Lanier 1613.jpg

| alt1 = Painting of Nicholas Lanier holding a lute, 1613

| caption1 = Nicholas Lanier, 1613

| image2 =Kupetzky Lute 1711.jpg

| alt2 = Painter David Hoyer playing a lute

| caption2 = David Hoyer, an artist from Leipzig, painted by Jan Kupetzky, c. 1711.

|image3= Jan Mijtens, A Lady Playing a Lute.jpg

|alt3=an Mijtens, A Lady Playing a Lute

|caption3 = Theorbo-lute hybrid. From the 1648 painting A Lady Playing a Lute by Jan Mijtens.

|footer=Portraits of Early modern or Renaissance people, posing with lutes.

}}

:See Lute, History and Evolution

The European lute and the modern Near-Eastern oud descend from a common ancestor via diverging evolutionary paths. The lute is used in a great variety of instrumental music from the Medieval to the late Baroque eras and was the most important instrument for secular music in the Renaissance.{{cite book|last1=Grout|first1=Donald Jay|title=A History Of Western Music|date=1962|publisher=J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London|page=202|chapter=Chapter 7: New Currents In The Sixteenth Century|quote=By far the most popular household solo instrument of the Renaissance was the lute|isbn=978-0-393-93711-4}} During the Baroque music era, the lute was used as one of the instruments which played the basso continuo accompaniment parts. It is also an accompanying instrument in vocal works. The lute player either improvises ("realizes") a chordal accompaniment based on the figured bass part, or plays a written-out accompaniment (both music notation and tabulature ("tab") are used for lute). As a small instrument, the lute produces a relatively quiet sound.

Medieval lutes were 4- or 5-course instruments, plucked using a quill as a plectrum. There were several sizes, and by the end of the Renaissance, seven different sizes (up to the great octave bass) are documented. Song accompaniment was probably the lute's primary function in the Middle Ages, but very little music securely attributable to the lute survives from the era before 1500. Medieval and early-Renaissance song accompaniments were probably mostly improvised, hence the lack of written records.

In the last few decades of the 15th century, to play Renaissance polyphony on a single instrument, lutenists gradually abandoned the quill in favor of plucking the instrument with the fingertips. The number of courses grew to six and beyond. The lute was the premier solo instrument of the 16th century, but continued to accompany singers as well.

By the end of the Renaissance the number of courses had grown to ten, and during the Baroque era the number continued to grow until it reached 14 (and occasionally as many as 19). These instruments, with up to 26–35 strings, required innovations in the structure of the lute. At the end of the lute's evolution the archlute, theorbo and torban had long extensions attached to the main tuning head to provide a greater resonating length for the bass strings, and since human fingers are not long enough to stop strings across a neck wide enough to hold 14 courses, the bass strings were placed outside the fretboard, and were played open, i.e., without pressing them against the fingerboard with the left hand.

Over the course of the Baroque era the lute was increasingly relegated to the continuo accompaniment, and was eventually superseded in that role by keyboard instruments. The lute almost fell out of use after 1800. Some sorts of lute were still used for some time in Germany, Sweden, Ukraine.

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=center

|header=Bowed

| align = right

| image3 = Kemenche0.jpg

| width3= 70

| alt3 = Kemençe of the Black Sea

| caption3 = Kemençe of the Black Sea

| image1 = Violas de arco en un manuscrito del año 900 - 950.jpg

| width1 = 200

| alt1 = Viols or vielles from Commentary on the Apocalypse

| caption1 = Spain, "second third of 10th century".{{cite web |url= http://bdh.bne.es/bnesearch/detalle/bdh0000047185 |title= Título uniforme [In Apocalipsin] Title Beati in Apocalipsin libri duodecim |author= |date= |website=bdh.bne.es |publisher=BIBLIOTECA DIGITAL HISPÁNICA |access-date= 10 December 2016|quote=}} Violas de arco played with a bow. From Commentary on the Apocalypse, Codice VITR 14.1.

|image2= Byzantine Lyra Museo Nazionale.jpg

|caption2 = Earliest known depiction of lyra in a Byzantine ivory casket (900 – 1100 AD). (Museo Nazionale, Florence){{citation |last=Butler |first=Paul |title=The rebec project |date=October 2003 | publisher=Personal website |url=http://crab.rutgers.edu/~pbutler/rebec.html |access-date=2009-03-10}}

|alt2= Byzantine Lyra circa 900-1100 AD

|width2=178

|image4= Gdulka-bow_copy.jpg

|alt4= Bulgarian Gdulka

|caption4= Bulgarian Gdulka with bow

|width4= 118

}}

Spain had bowed instruments as early as the 10th and 11th centuries AD, when they were included in Spanish manuscripts, such as the Commentary on the Apocalypse Beatus of Liébana Emilianense Codex.{{cite book |last=Sachs |first=Curt |date=1940 |title=The History of Musical Instruments |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach|url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |page=[https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach/page/464 464] |isbn=978-0-393-02068-7 |quote=first evidence of a bowed instrument is found in Spanish manuscripts of the tenth and eleventh centuries ... tall, about a man's height ... resembled a bottle with a cork; the lower end was cut off square.}}{{cite web |url= http://bdh.bne.es/bnesearch/detalle/bdh0000047185 |title= Título uniforme [In Apocalipsin] Title Beati in Apocalipsin libri duodecim |author= |website=bdh.bne.es |publisher=Biblioteca Digital Hispánica |access-date= 10 December 2016}}

The Byzantines had a bowed lute called a "kamānģa rūmī" in the east, also known as the Byzantine lira in "Greece, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia". The instrument still has a presence in the Eastern Mediterranean, in Southern Italy as the Calabrian lira, in Bulgaria as the gadulka, in Greece, Iran, Turkey, Armenia, and regions adjacent to the Black Sea the kemenche, in Dalmatia as the lijerica.

Sachs said that the Byzantine lyra would become the main bowed instrument in Europe, eventually becoming the "fiddle, vièle, [and] viola". The rebec also had a presence in Europe, but was not derived from the lyra but from the rabâb.

File:Cytharas with the Lamb of God.jpg. Instruments labeled "citharas" in the medieval manuscript.]]

The word cythara was used generically for a wide variety stringed instruments of medieval and Renaissance Europe, including not only the lyre and harp but also necked, string instruments.{{cite journal |last=Segerman |first=Ephraim |title=A Short History of the Cittern |jstor= 842519|journal=The Galpin Society Journal |volume=52 |date= April 1999|doi= 10.2307/842519|pages=106–107}} In fact, unless a medieval document gives an indication that it meant a necked instrument, then it likely was referring to a lyre. It was also spelled cithara or kithara and was Latin for the Greek lyre. However, lacking names for some stringed instruments from the medieval period, these have been referred to as fiddles and citharas/cytharas, both by medieval people and by modern researchers. The instruments are important as being ancestors to or influential in the development of a wide variety of European instruments, including fiddles, vielles, violas, citoles, guitars. Although not proven to be completely separate from the line of lute-family instruments that dominated Europe (lute, oud, gittern, mandore), arguments have been made that they represent a European-based tradition of instrument building, which was for a time separate from the lute-family instruments.

Images showing instruments that have been labeled "cythara" in the medieval documents that they came from. Their lineage is not clearly understood. The Rylands Beatus instruments come from Spain, and may link to the Arabian/Muslim traditions of instrument making there, or be a form of plucked-fiddle, similar to those seen in Central Asia (an area that the Persians and Arabs conquered and picked up musical traditions from.)

The traditions of other cytharas are less understood and may represent a time of European experimentation, in which the cithara-lyre was transformed into the cythara-lute.

File:Stuttgarter Psalter Folio 23 - Miniatur 108r Detail.jpg|Stuttgart Psalter, 820–830 AD, cythara

File:Musician playing a medieval cythara 6.jpg|Stuttgart Psalter, 820–830 AD, cythara

File:B Facundus 117v cropped with cytharas.jpg|Beatus of Liébana, Ms. Vitr. 14.2, 1047 AD, angels holding cytharas

File:Panel depicting San Millán by Master Engelram and his son Redolfo, Spanish 1060–80, Metropolitan Museum of Art.jpg|1060–80, Spain. Panel depicting Saint Aemilian of Cogolla with a three-stringed lute; the body and neck bear resemblance to the pandura, the peghead to cythara.

File:Rylands Beatus Cythara 1.jpg|Rylands Beatus, c. 1175, cythara

File:Rylands Beatus Cythara 2.jpg|Rylands Beatus, c. 1175, cythara

File:Utrechts-Psalter PSALM-70 cithara and harp intruments of psaltery.jpg|Utrecht Psalter, c. 850, cythara (held), cithara and organ (on ground)

File:Utrechts-Psalter PSALM-91 harp and cythara.jpg|Utrecht Psalter, c. 850, cythara and harp

File:Utrechts-Psalter PSALM-134 Lyre and Cythara.jpg|Utrecht Psalter, c. 850, cythara and lyre

File:Cithara from Utrecht Psalter Psalm 42.jpg|Utrecht Psalter, c. 850 cythara. Quoted text illustrated: "Confitebor tibi in cithara Deus Deus meus" (To thee, O God my God, I will give praise upon the cithara)

File:Ethan playing his cithara with King David, from the Vivian Bible, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Latin 1, folio 215v.jpg|Bible of Charles the Bald, 9th century, cythara as lute or lyre combined, from the Bible of Charles the Bald, 9th century

.

{{Multiple images

|image1=Medieval musician playing gittern.jpg

|caption1=Juan Oliver's c.1330 painting at Pamplona Cathedral, showing a musician playing a gittern.

|width1=100

|image2= Woman playing quintern, Tobias Stimmer.jpg

|caption2=By 1570 the German quinterne resembled the European 4-course guitar, including how it was strung.

|width2=100

}}

The gittern was a relatively small gut strung round-backed instrument that first appears in literature and pictorial representation during the 13th century in Western Europe (Iberian Peninsula, Italy, France, England). It is usually depicted played with a quill plectrum,P. 118. The Encyclopedia of Music. New York: Hermes House, 2002. as we can see clearly beginning in manuscript illuminations from the 13th century.{{cite web|title=Pédagogue enseignant à deux musiciens jouant de la harpe et de la guiterne|url= http://musiconis.paris-sorbonne.fr/fiche/79/P%C3%A9dagogue+enseignant+%C3%A0+deux+musiciens+jouant+de+la+harpe+et+de+la+guiterne|website=musiconis.paris-sorbonne.fr|date=9 January 2017|archive-url= http://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/index2.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmusiconis.paris-sorbonne.fr%2Ffiche%2F79%2FP%25C3%25A9dagogue%2Benseignant%2B%25C3%25A0%2Bdeux%2Bmusiciens%2Bjouant%2Bde%2Bla%2Bharpe%2Bet%2Bde%2Bla%2Bguiterne |archive-date=25 March 2018}}

It was also called the guitarra in Spain, guiterne or guiterre in France, the chitarra in Italy and quintern in Germany.{{cite dictionary |url=http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199743391.001.0001/acref-9780199743391-e-6182?rskey=Udj8im&result=6181 |title=Quinterne [quintern] |dictionary=The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments |edition=2nd |access-date=2015-03-20 |doi=10.1093/acref/9780199743391.001.0001 |year=2014 |isbn=978-0-19-974339-1|last1=Libin |first1=Laurence}} A popular instrument with court musicians, minstrels, and amateurs, the gittern is considered ancestral to the modern guitar and possibly to other instruments like the mandore and gallichon.

From the early 16th century, a vihuela shaped (flat-backed) guitarra began to appear in Spain, and later in France, existing alongside the gittern. Although the round-backed instrument appears to have lost ground to the new from which gradually developed into the guitar familiar today, the influence of the earlier style continued. Examples of lutes converted into guitars exist in several museums, while purpose-built instruments like the gallichon utilised the tuning and single string configuration of the modern guitar. A tradition of building round-backed guitars in Germany continued to the 20th century with names like gittar-laute and Wandervogellaute.

The mandore (or mandola in Italian) is a musical instrument, a small member of the lute family, teardrop shaped, with four to six courses of gut strings{{cite book| title = The Mandolin Project| last = McDonald | first = Graham| year = 2008| publisher = Graham McDonald Stringed Instruments |pages=7–8 | location = Jamison, Australia| isbn = 978-0-9804762-0-0}} and pitched in the treble range.{{cite journal | title= Mandore [Mandorre] | url= http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199743391.001.0001/acref-9780199743391-e-4651?rskey=jsivgN&result=1 | journal= The Groves Dictionary of Musical Instruments | access-date= 2015-03-21| doi= 10.1093/acref/9780199743391.001.0001 | year= 2014 | last1= Libin | first1= Laurence | isbn= 978-0-19-974339-1}} It was considered a new instrument in French music books from the 1580s,{{cite book| title = The Mandolin Project| last = McDonald | first = Graham| year = 2008| publisher = Graham McDonald Stringed Instruments |pages=7 | location = Jamison, Australia| isbn = 978-0-9804762-0-0}} but is descended from and very similar to the gittern.{{cite journal |last=Tyler |first=James |year=1981 |title=The Mandore in the 16th and 17th Centuries |url=http://le.luth.free.fr/mandore/articles/01-Tyler_mandore.pdf |journal=Early Music |volume=9 |issue=1 | jstor =3126587|doi=10.1093/earlyj/9.1.22|publication-date=January 1981 |access-date=2013-07-07 |pages=22–31}} It is considered ancestral to the modern mandolin. Other earlier instruments include the medieval European citole{{cite book| title = The Mandolin Project| last = McDonald | first = Graham| year = 2008| publisher = Graham McDonald Stringed Instruments |pages=4–8 | location = Jamison, Australia| isbn = 978-0-9804762-0-0}} and the Greek and Byzantine pandura.

The history of modern mandolins, mandolas and guitars are all intertwined. The instruments shared common ancestor instruments.{{cite book| title = The Mandolin Project| last = McDonald | first = Graham| year = 2008| publisher = Graham McDonald Stringed Instruments |pages=1–14 | location = Jamison, Australia| isbn = 978-0-9804762-0-0}} Some instruments became fashionable widely, and others locally. Experts argue as to the differences; because many of the instruments are so similar but not identical, classifying them has proven difficult

The Cantigas de Santa Maria shows 13th-century instruments similar to lutes, mandores, mandolas and guitars, being played by European and Islamic players. The instruments moved from Spain northward to France{{cite web|url=http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/furniture/furniture_features/musical_instruments/objects/object.php?id=7&id2=1&action=&hits=&page=&pages=&object_type=&country=&start_year=&end_year=&object=&artist=&maker=|title=Mandore Boissart|publisher=The Victoria and Albert Museum|access-date=2010-11-14|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110109092900/http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/furniture/furniture_features/musical_instruments/objects/object.php?id=7&id2=1&action=&hits=&page=&pages=&object_type=&country=&start_year=&end_year=&object=&artist=&maker=|archive-date=2011-01-09}} and eastward towards Italy by way of Provence.

Like the earlier gittern, the mandore's back and neck were in earlier forms carved out of a block of wood.{{harvnb|Tyler|Sparks|1992|pp=6–7}} This "hollowed out construction" did still exist in the 16th century, according to James Tyler, but was becoming rare. The method was being replaced by gluing curved staves together to form back, and adding a neck and peg box.

:See: Classical guitar, history and Guitar, history

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=center|total_width=180|direction=vertical

|header=

| align = right

| image1 = Guitar latina morisca.jpg

| alt1 = Guitarra Latina or citole and Guitarra morisca

| caption1 = Photo from the Cantigas de Santa Maria, Castile/Spain, c. 1300–1340. The left instrument has been called both Guitarra latina and citole. The other instrument has been called guitarra morisca.

| image2 =

| alt2 =

| caption2 =

}}

File:Jenny Bohman with Brian Kramer, Blues Jam at S-ta Clara Bierhaus, 2009-09-30.jpg

The modern acoustic guitar comes from a long evolution of stringed musical instruments. It has often been claimed that the guitar is a development of the medieval instrument vihuela as evolution of ancient lute.

Although the word guitar today indicates a specific musical instrument family, centered around the acoustic guitar, in the past it has been used in English about members of the cittern family as well, for example the English guitar and Portuguese guitar.

Further, the ancestor instrument of the citterns, the cytole, came from Spain during the period that one of the ancestors of the guitar, the gittern, was being played. It also has been confused with the Guitarra latina from the early period of instrument development in Spain, and no clear relationship nor distinction has been formed about these guitar ancestors or cousins.

Gitterns, a small plucked guitar were the first small guitar-like instruments created during the spanish Middle Ages with a round back like that of a lute.{{Cite web|title = Gittern|url = http://www.medieval-life-and-times.info/medieval-music/gittern.htm|website = www.medieval-life-and-times.info|access-date = October 7, 2015}} Modern guitar shaped instruments were not seen until the Renaissance era where the body and size began to take a guitar-like shape.

The earliest string instruments that related to the guitar and its structure were broadly known as the vihuelas within Spanish musical culture. Vihuelas were string instruments that were commonly seen in the 16th century during the Renaissance. Later, Spanish writers distinguished these instruments into two categories of vihuelas. The vihuela de arco was an instrument that mimicked the violin, and the vihuela de penola was played with a plectrum or by hand. When it was played by hand it was known as the vihuela de mano. Vihuela de mano shared extreme similarities with the Renaissance guitar as it used hand movement at the sound hole or sound chamber of the instrument to create music.{{Cite book|title = The Art and Times of the Guitar|last = Grunfeld|first = Frederic|publisher = Macmillan Company|year = 1971|location = New York City|pages = 61–63}}

By 1790 only six-course vihuela guitars (six unison-tuned pairs of strings) were being created and had become the main type and model of guitar used in Spain. Most of the older 5-course guitars were still in use but were also being modified to a six-coursed acoustical guitar. Fernando Ferandiere's{{Cite web | url=http://www.tecla.com/authors/ferandiere.htm | title=Ferandiere, Fernando Archives}} book Arte de tocar la guitarra espanola por musica (Madrid, 1799) describes the standard Spanish guitar from his time as an instrument with seventeen frets and six courses with the first two 'gut' strings tuned in unison called the terceras and the tuning named to 'G' of the two strings. The acoustic guitar at this time began to take the shape familiar in the modern acoustic guitar. The coursed pairs of strings eventually became less common in favor of single strings.{{Cite book|title = The Guitar and its Music|url = https://archive.org/details/guitaritsmusicfr00tyle|url-access = limited|last = Tyler|first = James|publisher = Oxford University Press|year = 2002|isbn = 978-0-19-921477-8|location = United Kingdom|pages = [https://archive.org/details/guitaritsmusicfr00tyle/page/n255 229]–231}}

Finally, c. 1850, the form and structure of the modern guitar is credited to Spanish guitar maker Antonio Torres Jurado, who increased the size of the guitar body, altered its proportions, and invented the breakthrough fan-braced pattern. Bracing, which refers to the internal pattern of wood reinforcements used to secure the guitar's top and back and prevent the instrument from collapsing under tension, is an important factor in how the guitar sounds. Torres' design greatly improved the volume, tone, and projection of the instrument, and it has remained essentially unchanged since.

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=center|total_width=280

|header=Citole and cittern

| align = right

|image1= Rylands Beatus Cythara 3.png

|alt1=illuminated image from Rylands Beatus showing man playing Cythara lute

|caption1= Rylands Beatus, c. 1175, cythara.

| image2 = Ormesby Psalter Citole.jpg

| alt2 = Ormesby Psalter citole

| caption2 = England, East Anglia. Angel playing citole in an illustration from the "Ormesby Psalter" (c. 1310)

| image3 = Woman with cittern 1677 by Pieter van Slingeland.jpg

| alt3 = Woman with a cittern, 1677

| caption3 = "Woman with cittern", canvas painted 1677 by Pieter van Slingelandt (c. 1630–1691).

}}

The citole was a string musical instrument, closely associated with the medieval fiddles (viol, vielle, gigue) and commonly used in Europe from 1200–1350.{{cite encyclopedia |editor-last= Sadie |editor-first=Stanley |title= Citole |encyclopedia= The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments |year=1984 |id= Volume 1 |page= 374}}{{harvnb|Chisholm|1911|p=397}}. "CITOLE, also spelled Systole, Cythole, Gytolle, &c. (probably a Fr. diminutive form of cithara, and not from Lat. cista, a box)"{{cite journal|last=Wright |first= Laurence|date= May 1977|title=The Medieval Gittern and Citole: A Case of Mistaken Identity |jstor=841364|journal= The Galpin Society Journal |volume=30 |pages=24, 27–28 |doi=10.2307/841364 }} The earliest representations of the instrument are in sculpture in Spain and Italy, with Spain having the most. Another link to Spain is the similarity to plucked fiddles in the Spanish Beatus Apocalypse manuscripts, such as the Ryland Beatus. Examples of these plucked fiddles trace back to Central Asian art, such as the Airtam Frieze. This artwork is too distant in time to be considered a relative, though it is very similar to many citoles.

The one surviving citole has a hollowed neck, a feature of the rubabs and Coptic lute.

Although it was largely out of use by the late 14th century, the Italians "re-introduced it in modified form" in the 16th century as the cetra (cittern in English), and it was possibly ancestral to the Spanish guitar as well.{{harvnb|Wright|1977 |p=32}}{{cite web |url= http://www.crab.rutgers.edu/~pbutler/citole.html |title= The Citole Project |last= Butler |first= Paul |website= crab.rutgers.edu |access-date= 16 November 2016 |quote= The citole is definite ancestor of the cittern. |archive-date= 7 August 2022 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20220807160212/http://crab.rutgers.edu/~pbutler/citole.html |url-status= dead }}{{cite book |last=Galpin |first=Francis William |date=1911 |title= Old English Instruments of Music |url= https://archive.org/details/oldenglishinstru00galprich |location= Chicago |publisher= A.C. McClurg and Company |pages=[https://archive.org/details/oldenglishinstru00galprich/page/21 21]–22 |quote=Now it is well known that the Greeks and Romans adopted many of the instruments which they found in popular use throughout Asia Minor ... this instrument with vertical incurved sides and flat back was brought into Southern Europe, the first name given to the Guitar in medieval times being Guitare Latine. ... In this way, and popularized by the troubadours and minstrels, the Guitar reached our country in the thirteenth century.}} Three possible descendant instrument are the English guitar, Waldzither, Portuguese guitar and the Corsican Cetera, all types of cittern.

The cittern or cithren (Fr. cistre, It. cetra, Ger. zitter, zither, Sp. cistro, cedra, cítola)[1] is a stringed instrument dating from the Renaissance. Modern scholars debate its exact history, but it is generally accepted that it is descended from the Medieval citole (or cytole). It looks much like the modern-day flat-back mandolin and the modern Irish bouzouki. Its flat-back design was simpler and cheaper to construct than the lute. It was also easier to play, smaller, less delicate and more portable. Played by all classes, the cittern was a premier instrument of casual music-making much as is the guitar today.

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=center|total_width=310

|header=4-course guitar, viola

| align = right

| image1 = Cover of Le Premier Livre De Chansons, Gaillardes, Pavannes, Bransles, Almandes, Fantaisies by Guillaume de Morlaye (c. 1510-c. 1558).gif

| alt1 = 4-course guitar on cover of music book, 1552

| caption1 = Cover of 1552 music book by Guillaume de Morlaye. Four-course guitar.

| image2 = 4-course guitar, c1570.jpg

| alt2 = woodcut engraving of woman playing 4-course guitar, 16th century

| caption2 = 4-course guitar, c1570

}}

By the late 15th century, small guitar shaped instruments were appearing in Spain and Italy. The instruments were smaller than lutes, which separates them from the later vihuela, which they resembled. As these took over from the gittern, they began to be called guitars in the 16th century. The use of these newer guitars overlapped with the older gittern, which may have seen occasional use into the 18th century.{{cite encyclopedia |editor-last= Sadie |editor-first=Stanley |last= Wright |first=Laurence |entry= Gittern |encyclopedia= The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments |year=1984 |id= Volume 2 |page= 50 |quote= [Laurence Wright, quoting Tinctoris:] that [instrument], for example, invented by the Spanish which both they and the Italians call the viola, but the French the demi-luth. This viola differs from the lute in that the lute is much larger and tortoise-shaped, while the viola is flat, and in most cases curved inwards on each side.}}

Known by modern musicologists as the "Renaissance four-course guitar", the instrument was contemporary with the lute and the vihuela.{{cite encyclopedia |editor-last= Sadie |editor-first=Stanley |author1= Harvey Turnbull |author2= James Tyler|entry= Guitar |encyclopedia= The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments |year=1984 |id= Volume 2 |pages= 89–109|quote=}} The instruments were called violas by the French and Italians. As the instruments were developed in Italy, Spain and France, they grew larger, while the Portuguese kept making the smaller guitars, and still called them violas.

The instrument remained popular enough for music to be published for it in England and Italy into the 17th century, and Spain into the 18th century.

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=center|total_width=310

|header=Viol, Viheula

| align = right

| image1 =European in Japan playing viol.jpg color modified.jpg

| alt1 = Woman playing viol

| caption1 = Japanese painting from 1573–1615 of a European woman with a viol. Her viol has four courses of strings. Later viols would be commonly strung with 6 single strings and played with a bow.

| image2 = ViolaDaMano Raimondi c1510.jpg

| alt2 = A gittern and a rebec

| caption2 = Italian engraving from before 1510. Depicts the poet Giovanni Filoteo Achillini playing the viola da mano or vihuela de mano.

|footer= The viola da mano was the Italian version of the vihuela de mano. The two instruments were equivalent, but with different bodies. The viol had "C-shape cuts with pointed corners" while the vihuela had a "figure-of-eight body shape".{{cite web |url= http://www.vihuelademano.com/viola-da-mano/daiLibri.htm |title= Reconstruction of a plucked viola from the painting Madonna and Child with Saints by Veronese artist Girolamo dai Libri (1474–1555) |last=Batov |first=Alexander |website= vihuelademano.com |access-date=12 September 2018 |quote=Viola da mano can be regarded as an Italian equivalent to the Spanish vihuela. The most obvious difference between the two seems to be only the shape of their bodies: C-shape cuts with pointed corners on the viola da mano and figure-of-eight body shape on the vihuela.}}

}}

The vihuela was a guitar-shaped instrument that existed at the same time as the 4-course and 5-course guitars, tuned as a lute, with moveable gut frets. Its resemblance to the guitar has caused speculation that it might be related. However the 4-course guitar predates the vihuela, and that was the instrument was which was modified to create the 5-course guitar.

The guitar was an instrument of popular music; the vihuela was an instrument for the "virtuoso player".{{cite encyclopedia |editor-last= Sadie |editor-first=Stanley |author1= Diana Poulton

|entry= Vihuela|encyclopedia= The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments |year=1984 |id= Volume 3 |pages= 724–727|quote=}} Vihuela was used as a word in Spain starting in the 13th century. The instrument was popular in Spain in the 15th and 16th centuries. In Italy and Portugal it was called viola.

There were several different types of vihuela (or different playing methods at least):

• Vihuela de mano: 6 or 5 courses played with the fingers
• Vihuela de penola: played with a quill plectrum
• Vihuela de arco: played with a bow (ancestor of the viola da gamba)
• Viola da Gamba: leg viol
• Viola da braccio: arm viol

Plucked vihuelas, being essentially flat-backed lutes, evolved in the mid-15th century, in the Kingdom of Aragón, located in north-eastern Iberia (Spain). In Spain, Portugal, and Italy the vihuela was in common use by the late 15th through to the late 16th centuries. In the second half of the 15th century some vihuela players began using a bow, leading to the development of the viol.{{cite encyclopedia |editor-last= Sadie |editor-first=Stanley |author1= Diana Poulton

|entry= Viol |encyclopedia= The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments |year=1984 |id= Volume 3 |pages= 736–741|quote=}}

The vihuela faded away, along with the complex polyphonic music that was its repertoire, in the late 16th century. The vihuela's descendants that are still played are the violas campaniças of Portugal. Much of the vihuela's place, role, and function was taken up by the subsequent Baroque guitar (also sometimes referred to as vihuela or bigüela).

Today, instruments like the tiple are descendants of vihuelas brought to America in the 16th century.

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=center|total_width=310

|header=

| align = left

| image1 =Jan Vermeer van Delft 013.jpg

| alt1 = guitar player by Johannes Vermeer

| caption1 =Dutch Republic, c. 1672. The guitar player by Johannes Vermeer

|image2=Recueil des modes de la cour de France, 'Dame de Qualite en Habit de Chambre' LACMA M.2002.57.13.jpg

|alt2= 'Dame de Qualite en Habit de Chambre' by Henri Bonnart

|caption2= France, 1683. Quality Lady in Dressing Gown by Henri Bonnart

|footer=

}}

The Baroque guitar (c. 1600–1750) is a string instrument with five courses of gut strings and moveable gut frets.Harvey Turnbull, The Guitar (From The Renaissance to the Present Day) (3rd impression 1978), London: Batsford ({{ISBN|0 7134 3251 9}}), p. 15: "Early lutes, vihuelas and guitars share one important feature that would have been of practical concern to the player; the frets, unlike the fixed metal frets on the modern guitar, were made of gut and tied round the neck" (Chapter 1 – The Development of the Instrument). 5-course guitars were used in Italy by the late 1400s. Like the 4-course guitar and the vihuela, this instrument could also be called viola or vihuela and use the variations, such as viola da mano, vihuela del mano.

The "Hispano-Italian guitar" was made fashionable in the 17th century by Italian actors, working in Paris.{{cite book |last=Sachs |first=Curt |date=1940 |title=The History of Musical Instruments |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach|url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |pages=[https://archive.org/details/historyofmusical00sach/page/374 374]–375|isbn=978-0-393-02068-7}} It was first an instrument of aristocrats, inspired by the actors, and later it became an amateur instrument.

The Baroque guitar replaced the Renaissance lute as the most common instrument found in the home.Manfred F Bukofzer, Music In The Baroque Era (From Monteverdi to Bach), London: J. M. Dent & Sons (1st UK edition 1948), p. 47: "The Spanish fashion in Italy brought a speedy victory of the nosiy guitar over the dignified lute."Donald Jay Grout, A History Of Western Music, London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1962, Chapter 7: New Currents In The Sixteenth Century, p. 202: "By far the most popular household solo instrument of the Renaissance was the lute." The earliest attestation of a five-stringed guitar comes from the mid-sixteenth-century Spanish book Declaracion de Instrumentos Musicales by Juan Bermudo, published in 1555.Tom and Mary Anne Evans, Guitars: From the Renaissance to Rock, London: Paddington Press, 1977, p. 24: "The first incontrovertible evidence of five-course instruments can be found in Miguel Fuenllana's Orphenica Lyre of 1554, which contains music for a vihuela de cinco ordenes. In the following year Juan Bermudo wrote in his Declaracion de Instrumentos Musicales: 'We have seen a guitar in Spain with five courses of strings.' Bermudo later mentions in the same book that 'Guitars usually have four strings,' which implies that the five-course guitar was of comparatively recent origin, and still something of an oddity." The first treatise published for the Baroque guitar was Guitarra Española de cinco ordenes (The Five-course Spanish Guitar), c. 1590, by Juan Carlos Amat.Harvey Turnbull, The Guitar (1978), p. 41 (Chapter 3 – The Baroque, Era Of The Five Course Guitar): "The new era is heralded by Juan Carlos Amat's little treatise Guitarra Espanola de cinco ordenes."Evans, Guitars (1977), p. 24: "We know from literary sources that the five course guitar was immensely popular in Spain in the early seventeenth century and was also widely played in France and Italy. ... Yet almost all the surviving guitars were built in Italy. ... This apparent disparity between the documentary and instrumental evidence can be explained by the fact that, in general, only the more expensively made guitars have been kept as collectors' pieces. During the early seventeenth century the guitar was an instrument of the people of Spain, but was widely played by the Italian aristocracy." The baroque guitar in contemporary ensembles took on the role of a basso continuo instrument and players would be expected to improvise a chordal accompaniment. Several scholars have assumed that the guitar was used together with another basso continuo instrument playing the bass line.Manfred F. Bukofzer, Music In The Baroque Era (From Monteverdi to Bach), London: J. M. Dent & Sons (1st UK edition 1948), p. 26: "The basso continuo ... required at least two players, one to sustain the bass line (string bass, or wind instrument) and the other for the chordal accompaniment (keybooard instruments, lute, theorboe, and the popular guitar)." However, there are good reasons to suppose that the guitar was used as an independent instrument for accompaniment in many situations.Lex Eisenhardt, "Baroque guitar accompaniment: where is the bass". Early Music 42, No 1 (2014) pp. 73–84. Intimately tied to the development of the Baroque guitar is the alfabeto system of notation.

File:Antonio de Torres (cropped).tif

In the second half of the 18th century, the doubled strings of the 5-course guitar began to become single strings, and by the end of the century, the 5-string guitar was out of fashion, in favor of the 6-string guitar. Examples of the new instrument with its additional low E string were seen in Spain (by 1780), Italy, France and England.

By the second half of the 19th century, luthier Antonio de Torres Jurado (1817–1892) had created the modern classical guitar. Ignacio Fleta (1897–1977) and Hermann Hauser Sr. (1882–1952) have also been linked to creating fine early versions of the instrument in the 20th century.{{cite book

|author=John Lichfield |title=Our Man in Paris: A Foreign Correspondent, France and the French |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=48G_BAAAQBAJ&pg=PT33 |date=30 March 2012 |publisher=Andrews UK Limited |isbn=978-1-908493-56-9 |pages=33–}}{{cite book |author=Manuel Rodriguez |title=The Art and Craft of Making Classical Guitars |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1UdMAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT17 |date=1 January 2010 |publisher=Hal Leonard |isbn=978-1-4768-5553-0 |pages=135–}}{{cite book |last1=Morrish |first1=John |title=The Classical Guitar Book: A Complete History |date=September 1, 2002 |publisher=Backbeat Books |isbn=0-87930-725-0 |page=26 |edition=2nd}}

Both Spain and Portugal took their instruments with them overseas. Spanish instruments were related to the vihuela. The Portuguese cavaquinho also was the forerunner of a family of instruments.

Even after the Muslims were conquered in Spain or driven out, the process of experimentation continued, leading to a number of European instruments, including the guitar. A similar process occurred in Italy. Both Spain and Italy experimented with the viol or vihuela which led to bowed viols, violas vielles, and guitars. Other experiments led to the citole and cittern or Portuguese guitar, the gittern and vandola (mandore, mandola) which also led to the guitar, but also to the mandolin family. Spanish instruments that survived in Spanish colonies include the tiple.

:See: Violas portuguesas (Portuguese Wikipedia)

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=center

|header=

| align = left

| image2 = Vea.viola.beiroa&bragesa.jpg

| width2= 170

| alt2 = iola beiroa and cavaquino

| caption2= Two Portuguese instruments: the viola beiroa from Beira Baixa Province (right) and the cavaquino or machete or viola braguesa from Braga.

| image1=Manresa, Cova de Sant Ignasi-PM 58556.jpg

|width1=190

|alt1=Angel with lute from the Cave of Saint Ignasi

|caption1= 1666, Cave of Saint Ignatius. Angel with 10 string viola.

}}

The Portuguese violas are a collection of instruments shaped like a classical guitar but smaller. Although the body is shaped like an "8", these instruments are not descended from the guitar. While the modern guitar was introduced in Portugal in the 18th century from France and has 6 simple strings, the Portuguese violas are older, were developed from the Iberian vihuela, are smaller and have 5 courses of double strings. Due to the widespread use in Portugal of the word "viola" to designate the guitar, it is common to call these violas "violas of 10 strings". However, there are no records of being called "10-string guitars".

Some of them are on the verge of extinction, but others continue to enjoy great popularity, despite being restricted to the interpretation of popular music. From Portugal, these instruments were taken to Brazil.

Violas native to Portugal include the Viola Braguesa, Viola Amarantina, Viola Toeira, Wire Viola, Viola Campaniça, and Viola Beiroa.

In Brazil, the viola became the viola caipira, while the classical guitar was called the violão. The viola caipira is an instrument of the Brazilian rural music while the violão an instrument of urban life.

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=center

| align = right

| image1 = O violeiro, 1899.jpg

| width1 = 200

| alt1 = Viola caipira

| caption1 = Brazil. Viola caipira

| image2 = Violadecocho.jpg

| width2 = 80

| alt2 = Viola de cocho

| caption2 = Brazil. Viola de cocho

}}

Brazilian violas include the

• viola caipira, common in the states of Goiás, Paraná, São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro
• Angrense or coastal viola, Common on the coast of the states of Paraná, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and associated with caiçara culture.
• Viola branca (white viola), specific to the region of Iguape and Cananéia, on the coast of the state of São Paulo.
• Viola de Queluz, Specific the ancient city of Queluz.
• Viola machete, also called machete, machim, machinho, machetinho or mochinho, and possibly originally from Madeira Island.
• Viola de cocho, common in the states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul.
• Viola de buriti, common in the state of Tocantins, from the use of buriti wood . Created in the 1940s in the community of Mumbuca do Jalapão.
• Viola dinâmica (or viola nordestina), Common in the Northeastern Brazilian states and very associated with record players, who often use the Paraguaçu tuning . It has acoustic amplifiers in the form of aluminum cones

File:Museu Cavaquinho PT Cavaquinhos Mundo.jpg

Portuguese experiments led to the Portuguese guitar, and other instruments seen today in places that Portuguese ships landed. There are several forms of cavaquinho used in different regions and for different styles of music. Separate varieties are named for Portugal, Braga (braguinha), Minho (minhoto), Lisbon, Madeira, Brazil, and Cape Verde; other forms are the braguinha, cavacolele, cavaco, machete, and ukulele.

The ukulele originated in the 1880s, based on several small guitar-like instruments of Portuguese origin, the machete,{{cite book|last=Tranquada and King|title=The Ukulele, A History|publisher=Hawaii University Press|year=2012|isbn=978-0-8248-3634-4}} the cavaquinho, the timple, and the rajão, which were introduced to the Hawaiian Islands by Portuguese immigrants from Madeira and Cape Verde.{{cite book

| last = Nidel

| first = Richard

| title = World Music: The Basics

| publisher = Routledge

| year = 2004

| page = [https://archive.org/details/worldmusic00rich_0/page/312 312]

| isbn = 978-0-415-96800-3

| url = https://archive.org/details/worldmusic00rich_0/page/312

}} Three immigrants in particular, Madeiran cabinet makers Manuel Nunes, José do Espírito Santo, and Augusto Dias, are generally credited as the first ukulele makers.{{cite book

| last = Roberts

| first = Helen

| title = Ancient Hawaiian Music

| publisher = Bernice P. Bishop Museum

| year = 1926

| pages = 9–10}} Two weeks after they disembarked from the SS Ravenscrag in late August 1879, the Hawaiian Gazette reported that "Madeira Islanders recently arrived here, have been delighting the people with nightly street concerts."{{cite web

| last = King

| first = John

| title = Prolegomena to a History of the 'Ukulele

| publisher = Ukulele Guild of Hawai'i

| year = 2003

| url = http://www.ukuleleguild.org/history.php

| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20040803005054/http://www.ukuleleguild.org/history.php

| archive-date = 2004-08-03

}} The instrument gained great popularity elsewhere in the United States during the early 20th century and from there spread internationally.

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=center

| align = right

| image1 = Tiple.jpg

| width1 = 130

| alt1 = Columbian tiple

| caption1 =The Columbian tiple is larger than the Puerto Rican tiple.

| image2 = National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka - Bordonua - Puerto Rico - Collected in 2008.jpg

| width2 = 130

| alt2 = Bordonua

| caption2 = Puerto Rico. Bordonua, has a large, deep body (sound-boxes are usually 6 inches (15 cm) deep) bass guitar

|image3= Hombre cantando por dinero en las cercanías del Hotel Humbodlt.jpg

|alt3= 3 Venezuelan cuatro

|caption3=Venezuelan cuatro

|width3=200

}}

A tiple (literally treble or soprano) is a plucked-string chordophone of the guitar family. The first mention of the tiple comes from musicologist Pablo Minguet e Irol in 1752. David Pelham says of the Colombian tiple: "The tiple is a Colombian adaptation of the Renaissance Spanish vihuela brought to the New World in the 16th century by the Spanish conquistadors. At the end of the 19th century, it evolved to its present shape.

The tipple of Puerto Rico is the smallest of the three string instruments of Puerto Rico that make up the orquesta jibara (i.e., the Cuatro, the Tiple and the Bordonua). According to investigations made by Jose Reyes Zamora, the tiple in Puerto Rico dates back to the 18th century. It is believed to have evolved from the Spanish guitarrillo. There was never a standard for the tiple and as a result there are many variations throughout the island of Puerto Rico including the most common tiple doliente, two smaller tiples (the tiple requinto and tiple vihuela), the larger tiplón or tiple con macho, and the largest tiple grande de Ponce.

The Puerto Rico bordonua resembles the old 17th century Spanish guitars, possibly including the Bajo de la Una.{{cite web |last1=Colon |first1=Luís Angel |title=Bordonúa Puertorriqueña 2002 |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/503623 |website=Met Museum |access-date=20 November 2021}} There were also special melodic Bordonuas that were used during the 1920s and 1930s as accompaniment to melody instead of the bass role. These were oddly tuned like a Tiple. This configuration is no longer used on the island. They are also related to the Spanish renaissance Vihuela, brought to the Island by conquering Spanish.

The cuatro is a family of Latin American string instruments played in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and other Latin American countries. The instrument's 15th-century predecessors were the Spanish vihuela and the Portuguese cavaquinho. Although some have viola-like shapes, most cuatros resemble a small to mid-sized classical guitar. In Puerto Rico and Venezuela, the cuatro is an ensemble instrument for secular and religious music, and is played at parties and traditional gatherings.{{cite web |url=http://stringedinstrumentdatabase.aornis.com/c.htm |website=Stringed Instrument Database |title=C |access-date=2018-03-20}}

{{multiple image

| caption_align = center

| header_align = center

| align = right

| image1 = Paapareetotores.jpg

| width1 = 130

| alt1 = Spanish lute or Laúd

| caption1 = Cuban musician Barbarito Torres playing a Spanish lute or Laúd.

| image2 = Orchestra bandurria.jpg

| width2 = 130

| alt2 = bandurria

| caption2 = International, including Spain, China, Philippines. Bandurria

| image3 = Three Bandolónes.jpg|Mexico

| alt3 = 3 bandolones

| caption3 = Three 18-string bandolons

| width3 = 84

| image4 = Moisés Torrealba.JPG

| width4 = 172

| alt4 = Bandola llanera

| caption4 = Moisés Torrealba playing a Bandola llanera.

| footer = The bandurria and laúd are members of a family, resembling a type of cittern. They have become international instruments, played in Spain and in former colonies of the Spanish Empire, including Cuba and the Philippines. The bandurria is an older instrument, its roots going back to the Mandore, which birthed both mandolin and bandurria. The laúd was developed about 1880.

}}

The bandurria was the Spanish version of the mandore, and the modern instrument is thus related to the mandolin family. The similarity of the instruments affects the history of other instruments from South and Central America; a variety of instruments exist called bandolas. At least one, the bandola andina colombiana, is related to the bandurria. The others are not clear at this time, and possibilities include mandolin family instruments such as the mandola or the cittern family. These were all present in Spain and Portugal during the colonization era. The bandolas have multiple courses of strings, like the bandurrias, mandolins and citterns.

Juan Ruiz first mentioned the term "mandurria" in the 14th century in his Libro De Buen Amor.{{cite encyclopedia |last=Schecter |first=John |encyclopedia=Grove Music Online. |title=Bandurria |edition=Oxford Music Online |year=2007 |publisher=Oxford University Press |doi=10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.01951}} After that, Juan Bermudo gave the description of the bandurria in his "Comiença el libro llamado declaraciõ de instrumentos" as a three-string instrument in 1555, but he also mentioned other types with four or even five strings.

It had become a flat-backed instrument by the 18th century, with five double courses of strings, tuned in fourths.{{cite book |title=The Early Mandolin |last1=Tyler |first1=James |last2=Sparks |first2=Paul |year=1992 |publisher=Clarendon Press |location=Oxford |isbn=0-19-816302-9 |page=[https://archive.org/details/earlymandolin0000tyle/page/52 52] |url=https://archive.org/details/earlymandolin0000tyle/page/52}} The original bandurrias of the Medieval period had three strings. During the Renaissance they gained a fourth string. During the Baroque period the bandurria had 10 strings (5 pairs).

There are also many different varieties of bandurria in South America, especially Peru and Bolivia. They have four courses, unlike the traditional Spanish six courses.{{cite web |title=B |author= |date=14 September 2013 |website=Stringed Instrument Database |url= https://stringedinstrumentdatabase.aornis.com/b.htm}} The four courses are double, triple or quadruple, and the tuning is guitar-like, rather than the fourths tuning used on the Spanish type.{{cite web|url=http://www.atlasofpluckedinstruments.com/south_america.htm |title=South America |publisher=ATLAS of Plucked Instruments |access-date=22 February 2014}} In Lima, Peru, harp and bandurria duos were common in the early 20th century. Nowadays people there still play bandurria accompanying with the popular vals peruano, or vals criollo.{{cite encyclopedia

|last=Schecter

|first=John

|encyclopedia=Grove Music Online.

|title=Bandurria

|edition=Oxford Music Online

|year=2007

|publisher=Oxford University Press

|doi=10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.01951

}}

The Philippine harp bandurria is a 14-string bandurria used in many Philippine folkloric songs, with 16 frets and a shorter neck than the 12-string bandurria. This instrument probably evolved in the Philippines during the Spanish period, from 1521 to 1898.

Larger instruments gave developed in the bandurria family including the Mexican bandolón and several instruments called bandola from Venezuela, Colombia and Peru. These include the Bandola llanera, bandola andina colombiana, bandola oriental, bandola guayanesa, and bandola Andina (or bandola Aymara or Peruvian bandola).

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=center

| align = right

| image1 = Vihuela Mexicana.jpg

| width1 = 94

| alt1 = Mexican vihuela

| caption1 = Mexican vihuela

| image2 =AcousticBassGtr.jpg

| width2 =189

| alt2 = Guitarrón mexicano

| caption2 =Guitarrón mexicano

| image3= Guitarra panzona.png

| width3 =105

| alt3 = Guitarra panzona

| caption3 =Guitarra panzona

| image4 =My guitarra de golpe.jpg

| width4 =84

| alt4 = guitarra de golpe

| caption4 =Guitarra de golpe

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In the 17th and 18th centuries, Mexican artisans built several types of instruments with double strings in three, four, five, six, seven and eight courses, influenced by their Spanish ancestors. Descendants of these instruments are bandolon, guitarra séptima, quinta huapanguera, jarana jarocha, concheras, and guitarra chamula, among others.

Although the Mexican vihuela has the same name as the historic Spanish plucked string instrument, the two are distinct. The Mexican vihuela has more in common with the Timple Canario (see: timple) due to both having five strings and both having vaulted (convex) backs. The Mexican vihuela is a small, deep-bodied rhythm guitar built along the same lines as the guitarrón. The Mexican Vihuela is used by Mariachi groups.

Although similar to a guitar, the Guitarrón mexicano was developed from the 16th-century Spanish bajo de uña ("fingernail[-plucked] bass").

The guitarra panzona, guitarra túa or guitarra blanca is a Mexican guitar —with six strings and deep body. This guitar is sometimes substituted by a guitarron. It provides a tubby sounding rhythm for calentano music, accompanying violin, guitar and tamborita.{{Cite web|title=The Stringed Instrument Database: G|url=https://stringedinstrumentdatabase.aornis.com/g.htm|access-date=2023-02-04|website=stringedinstrumentdatabase.aornis.com}}

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=center

| align = right

| image1 = Huapanguera.jpg

| width1 = 150

| alt1 = Huapanguera

| caption1 = Huapanguera

| image2 =Jose Guadalupe Guzman.jpg

| width2 =189

| alt2 = Bajo sexto

| caption2 =Bajo sexto

| image3= Jarana primera.jpg

| width3 =99

| alt3 = jarana huasteca

| caption3 =jarana huasteca

| image4 =My guitarra de golpe.jpg

| width4 =55

| alt4 = guitarra de golpe

| caption4 =Guitarra de golpe

}}

A Guitarra de golpe is a type of 5-string guitar designed in Mexico. The perked once had a distinct traditional shape that is designed to look like a stylised owl with wooden pegs, but nowadays this is sometimes replaced with a guitar or vihuela style headstock with machine heads. For a while during the 20th century, the Guitarra De Golpe fell into disuse in traditional Mariachi groups, and was replaced by the Classical guitar. It has now however been revived.

The huapanguera, guitarra quinta huapanguera or guitarra huapanguera is a Mexican guitar-like instrument that usually forms part of a conjunto huasteco ensemble, along with the jarana huasteca guitar and violin. Because of its large body and deeper structure, the huapanguera is able provide a much deeper sound compared to a regular acoustic guitar.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jmdACwAAQBAJ&q=huapanguera&pg=PT196|title=The Course of Mexican Music|last=Sturman|first=Janet|date=2015-12-22|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-317-55112-6|language=en}} Here it takes on the role of the bass instrument using a rhythmical strumming technique. Its physical construction features a large resonating body with a short neck.

File:HuapangoAcuarela cropped.jpg and huapanguera.]]

The jarana huasteca, jarana de son huasteco or jaranita is a string instrument. It is most often called simply jarana. It is a guitar-like chordophone with 5 strings. It is smaller than the guitarra huapanguera and usually forms part of the trío huasteco ensemble, along with the quinta huapanguera and violin, taking on the role of the rhythmical accompaniment to the ensemble.

The bajo quinto is probably a descendant of the Italian baroque chitarra battente.{{cite web| publisher=National Public Radio| title=The Bajo Quinto: The Instrument That Will Not Go Gently| date=June 28, 2012| author=Arcos, Betto| url=http://www.npr.org/2012/06/28/155850505/the-bajo-quinto-the-instrument-that-will-not-go-gently| access-date=2020-06-24}}

The manufacture of bajo quinto and sexto reached a peak in quality and popularity in the 19th century in central and southern Mexico, in the states of Guerrero, Michoacán, Morelos, Puebla, Oaxaca, and Tlaxcala.Bajos de espiga. Diccionario de la Música Española e Hispanoamericana. Sociedad General de Autores y Editores. Madrid (2002). {{ISBN|978-84-8048-303-2}}

{{multiple image|caption_align=center|header_align=center

| align = right

| image1 = AzCoupleGuitarsDance.JPG

| width1 = 189

| alt1 = Native Americans playing concheras

| caption1 = Mexico. Native Americans playing mandolin and vihuela de conchera in Mexico City.

| image2 =Old Charango.JPG

| width2 =200

| alt2 = "Old charango", has shape of mandolin or bandurria

| caption2 ="Old charango", has shape of mandolin or bandurria

}}

In Mexico, the Concheras lute tradition may date to the Spanish Conquest in the 16th century. Native Americans imitated the European instruments, making their own.{{cite journal |last=Luna |first= Jennie |date= 2013 |title= La Tradición Conchera: Historical Process of Danza and Catholicism |journal= Diálogo |volume= 16 |issue= 1 |pages= 47–64 |doi= 10.1353/dlg.2013.0000 |s2cid= 147970023 |url= https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1274&context=dialogo}} Sounds boxes were made from armadillo shells, from calabash gourds, and from strips of wood like the lute. The dancers who use the Concheras (also known as conchas) call them "Mecahuehuetl" (from Nahuatl: Meca(tl) = chord + Huehue(tl)= old one "drum"). The tradition is rooted in the Otomi, Jonaz, Chichimeca, and Caxcan tribes.

As Christians tried to suppress the native's religion, the instruments became a tool to preserve music. Early Concheros dancers were able to incorporate the precolumbian dance and drum rhythms into the music made on the guitars and lutes. A traditional conchero can tell which step should be carried out by how the melody is being strummed on the conchas.

Modern instruments include the mandolina conchera, vihuela conchera, and guitarra conchera. The vihuela and guitar types are tuned using reentrant tuning, each course having two strings an octave apart.

The charango was developed in what is now Bolivia and Peru. Adapted from European styles such as vihuela and round-backed mandolin (or earlier types such as bandurria or mandore). Native Americans have been credited with using armadillo hide to create a round back, which is made of wood in modern times. The instrument is widespread throughout the Andean regions of Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, northern Chile and northwestern Argentina, where it is a popular musical instrument that exists in many variant forms.

Two sizes are common: The smallest is the Walaycho (also hualaycho, maulincho, or kalampiador) with a scale typically around 30 cm long (up to about 56 cm with mechanical tuners). It has ten strings, which may be of metal, nylon, or nylon fishing line, arranged in five courses of two strings each. The Charangón (also charangone) is larger, in effect a tenor charango. About 75 cm long by 22 cm wide with a 42–51 cm scale.

A flat-backed version has been developed, the hatun charango or "grand charango", an extended-range charango developed in Peru in the modern era. It has either seven or eight strings, all set in single string courses except for the third course, which is double-strung.

File:LucielFotoGilArduz.jpg|Bolivia. Luciel Izumi playing modern charango

File:Armadillo backed Bolivian Charango 05.jpg|Bolivia. Charango, rounded back made from an armadillo

File:Charango hinten.JPG|Modern charango with wood back

File:Presentación de Timples 2000 en Puerto del Rosario.jpg|Canary Islands, Fuerteventura. timple

File:Guitarronero001.jpg|Chilean guitarron

File:Pedro Nel Martínez P.jpg|Colombia. Colombian tiple

File:Bandola 3.jpg|Columbia. Bandola andina

File:Kahi Ata Ratu performing live at CME-Fest, cropped.jpg|Sumba, Indonesia. Kahi Ata Ratu performing on the Junga. Originally a boat lute, this type was modeled after a Portuguese instrument.

File:Charango (Mexico) and Metal Scraper (Cuba) - Met Museum of Art, New York, NY.jpg|Merida, Yucatán, Mexico, 19th century. Six-stringed charanga or jamanita.

File:Mejorana2.jpg|Panama. Mejorana

File:TipleDoliente.jpg|Puerto Rican tiple doliente

File:Phoenix-Musical Instrument Museum-Puerto Rico Exhibit-Tiple Requinto--1800s.jpg|Puerto Rico, 19th century, tiple requinto

File:Bandola llanera.jpg|Venezuela. Bandol llanera

File:Antonio Facure - Bandola oriental.jpg|Venezuela. Bandola oriental

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• {{EB1911|wstitle=Citole |volume=6 |page=397}}

History

Lutes